Category Archives: My failing sanity

Just One Backup

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This week, the first after getting home from vacation, has been so satisfying. I’ve been getting Back Into Routine, crossing things off the to-do list, and gardening. My neighbour very kindly checked the house and watered the garden while I was gone, but of course there was much to be done after two weeks away. I have harvested one zucchini, and there are many, many more tiny ones on the plants, which grew so big that Salvadore was completely hidden; I had to move him to a different bed in order to enjoy his gnomeiness. I have two little peppers on my plants, and I had my first of many pea and tomato harvests.

I like to leave the house nice and clean when we leave for vacation as it makes reentry so much nicer; I make especial efforts to ensure the garbage and compost bins are empty and that the fridge only contains long-dated items. Unfortunately, and inexplicably, the jug of milk was something I forgot to deal with before leaving, and there was what can only be described as a science project in the three inches of milk left in the fridge. Ew. Chunky.

On that note, let’s get back to The Big Project. Previously on The Big Project, I had cleaned out my clothing closet and made a few rules for future shopping. This is, I feel, the easy part. It’s the rest of the house that will require some serious effort and also, is kind of boring. I like clothes! I am a bit daunted by other household items.

The next step in The Big Project, that I haven’t yet taken, is to go through my kitchen and donate my excess containers – the kids really do not need tiny snack containers at this stage of our lives – and to really assess the pantry situation.

And what a situation it is.

I have been working my way towards having Just One Backup of staple food and cleaning products, although I do make an exception for things I tend to need multiples of: canned beans and chickpeas, for example, for weeks in which I would need more than one can, or dish soap, which I appear to go through at an alarming rate. I have successfully gotten down to one backup of each of coffee and the various oils, vinegars, and sauces I use regularly, one bag each of flour, sugar, and rice, and one container of vitamins for each person in the house (we all have different brands). I still have a few extra nut butters and jars of vegan mayonnaise and salsa, as well as sundried tomatoes and, weirdly, mustard, but I’m sure we will get through them in due time. Tissues and toilet paper I purchase in large multipacks, and I try to have just one of those in backup.

Small digression: I was visiting with my husband’s aunt – who lives alone – a few weeks ago, and she told me that in the early stages of the pandemic she would purchase a large package of toilet paper every time she saw one available, not unlike me with twenty-five pound bags of flour. At one point she looked at her stockpile of toilet paper and thought oops. That stockpile of toilet paper lasted her a year and a half. I think we can all understand this. For reasons unknown to me, I have enough boxes of ziploc bags to last until I have headed for The Home or shuffled off this mortal coil, whichever comes first. I rarely use ziploc bags but somehow have a number of Costco three-packs in my pantry, in a variety of sizes, which must have been a Pandemic Purchase, but I cannot for the life of me recall my thinking on this matter. I may just give them away on our community Buy Nothing page. Either that, or I’ll leave them for my possible future grandchildren to discover upon my demise. Oh look, here’s Grandma’s wedding dress and…seven hundred ziploc bags. Huh. Will ziploc bags even exist fifty years from now? Who can say.

No matter. I have been working hard to not purchase things of which I already have backups (or, in some cases, several backups), and mostly, I have done well. I am trying to get back to my pre-pandemic consumption patterns and it is a Journey.

However, I have confessions to make. Friends, I am sorry to tell you that my Just One Backup vow has failed miserably in three notable areas: lemon juice, popcorn, and dried fruit. The last item, I give a pass – the dried fruit I love (strawberries and something that is cheerfully called Fruit Medley) is only available a couple times a year at Costco, and so I stock up when I can. This is my very valid excuse for having ten bags in my pantry at this time; it will last me for months, hopefully until the next time they come available.

As I mentioned briefly a little while ago, there was a strange blip in the lemon juice world, or at least, in my lemon juice world. Suddenly, there was no lemon juice anywhere. My brain immediately went from let’s just pick up one backup to PANIC PANIC PANIC. Let us refer to the lessons from the Minnesota Starvation Experiment as a precedent for the weird obsessions we get when something is not available to us. When I found store brand lemon juice, I bought it. When I found tiny little environmentally-disastrous plastic squeeze lemons, I bought them. My mom saw lemon juice at her grocery store and bought me two bottles. I now have seven bottles of lemon juice in my pantry and a few weeks ago it was back, available at Costco. Even with seven bottles in backup, I had a really hard time NOT buying the two-pack at Costco, and I know many of you can empathize with this. I especially feel bereft as it has not been available at Superstore this whole past month, and I noticed it was not there last week when I was at Costco. What if I can never buy it again, what have I done seems to be my thinking.

The other item that has been very difficult to buy recently is popcorn. Popcorn! Boom Chicka Pop has been largely unavailable for a few months now, so I have snapped up substitute bags here and there when I could. I am sorry to say that on my last trip to Superstore there was neither Skinny Pop nor Lesser Evil available, proving that I have indeed cursed us all by supporting ridiculously-named companies that apply moral values to food products. I currently have twelve (12!) bags of popcorn of various flavours and brands in my pantry, so it’s probably good that it’s currently unavailable. I mean, we all love popcorn but twelve bags is pretty excessive. WE JUST NEED TO WORK OUR WAY THROUGH WHAT WE HAVE, PEOPLE.

You may notice I haven’t mentioned the elephant in the room – sriracha. The sriracha shortage is a little unsettling, but not as unsettling as the environmental reason for the shortage. In any case, two of us here really like sriracha, and I have half a large bottle in the fridge with NO backup, but I think with careful rationing we should easily be able to make it into September, when it is supposed to become available again. We have two bottles of chili garlic sauce, and that should be a decent substitute, should we require one.

So I do need to go through the Very Full Pantry to see if there’s anything to be donated – ziploc bags! – and I vow not to purchase anything else until I am down to the last backup (but what if lemon juice and popcorn become instantly available, WHAT THEN), but I do have a food-related success story to share. I have cleaned out my freezer! I have discarded all freezer-burned items or items of questionable origin! I also have a dead freezer.

About a month ago I came home from the lake and my husband greeted me with the following: Nicole, you have to go look at the freezer. It won’t stop beeping and the temperature is rising. People, my freezer, my ten-year-old freezer, DIED. Without warning. As you might imagine, it was very full, and so I jumped into action. Fortunately we have a bar fridge-sized freezer from our early-marriage-child-free days, and after plugging it in we ascertained that it still works. I rearranged everything in the two fridge freezers and between those and the tiny freezer I managed to save most things, the exceptions being anything that I couldn’t recall purchasing or that was fuzzy with frost.

This is where I’ll mention that my mother-in-law still has the chest freezer she got as a newlywed in 1962, and it still works, although it probably uses more power than anything else in the house combined. STILL. Ten years, and I guess that old freezer is going to end up in the landfill? I don’t know what will happen to it when the New Freezer Delivery Guys take it away. I hope it will go for parts or something, but who would know. WHO WOULD KNOW.

Nonetheless, I’m counting this as a win. When my new freezer arrives, I am going to put nothing in it that cannot be consumed within a few months, mark my words. It’s a chance for a Fresh Start and I am not going to throw that away.

Weekly Reading

Children Playing Before A Statue Of Hercules. This collection, curated by my much-loved David Sedaris, is comprised of his favourite short stories and the proceeds of which go to an educational charity in NYC, which made me glad that I received this as a Christmas gift, rather than borrowing it from the library. If you love short stories like I do, you will not be disappointed. It is really excellent and it contains a few authors that I had never heard of, let alone read. One of my own favourite authors, Alice Munro, is featured; the story chosen isn’t my number one favourite, but it’s so good. Granted, as Sedaris says in the introduction, how can you choose just ONE Alice Munro story? Anyway, I loved this; every story is unique but they are all linked by the theme of class structures and societal constraints due to them.

Thick. This was such a powerful and important collection of essays about being a black woman in America. The author is an esteemed academic and her brilliance comes through in her writing, which is very thoughtful and readable, in addition to being very well researched. An important read for anyone, to be sure, but particularly for a very privileged white woman, like myself. I will be thinking about these essays for a long time to come, particularly one about her experience with prenatal and maternal “health care” that ended in a breathtakingly tragic way.

I am hoping to start on my cull of excess containers (and ziploc bags!) and organization of the pantry this week; will I, though? That remains to be seen! I hope you are having a lovely August so far. xo

Cart Karma

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This is not new information, but I am a strong believer in karma. I really do think that our actions have reactions, and that we get back what we send into the world, for better or worse. How many times have I thought I’d never do THAT and then I find myself in that exact situation, doing exactly that which I have disparaged? The answer is many. Many, many times. I have also said or done things that I have regretted, and that negative karma came right back to bite me, many times in my life.

Related to karma, a subset of karma, if you will, is Cart Karma. I think there are two things most associated with me as a person: the song Landslide, and my incandescent rage at people who do not return shopping carts to the carrel. Well, incandescent rage might be extreme. It really depends on the time of the month and what else is going on in my life at the time; my feelings range from mild irritation to disgust to despair for all humanity to incandescent rage.

When I die, may that be many decades in the future, I want my obituary to request that in lieu of flowers or any kind of charitable donation, my final wish is for people to just return their carts to the carrel. If we all did this, the world would be a much, much better place.

Also, I want Landslide to play at my funeral.

My disgust for non-shopping-cart-returners is so well known that even people I don’t know well send me memes or articles about shopping carts. Last week my dear friend Hannah (HI HANNAH) sent me this article, and it was a Very Satisfying Read. As Hannah said, I love that science basically proved that some people are dicks. Listen, I have All The Empathy for young mothers who have screaming children and for whom every second counts and maybe, maybe, maybe sometimes that means that they don’t return their carts. I give those women a pass. But I think that those women are in the extreme minority, as per my observations in the field. In fact, I have never seen a person with screaming children leave their cart askew, but I believe that they exist.

Most of my shopping is done at Superstore which, happily for my mental state, employs coin-operated shopping carts. You had better believe that even the most dedicated non-shopping-cart-returner will take their cart back to the carrel to get their dollar. I mean, children could be melting down, bombs could be going off inside their car, a tornado could be touching down in the parking lot, and they would still retrieve their loonie. No one in the history of the world has ever not returned a coin-operated cart. I know we would all like to believe that we all naturally want to work together towards the Greater Good, but if parking lots are any indication, Adam Smith was right. We need the Invisible Hand of the coin-operated shopping cart in order to achieve the social benefits and public good of an organized parking lot. Without external financial motivators, all devolves into utter chaos and disorder. It might be disheartening, but it’s true.

My general grocery routine is to visit Superstore weekly, right at their opening time. As I have said, this is good for my mental state, even if Superstore is constantly going through weird and unexpected shortages, that may or may not be pandemic-related. An example very relevant to my life: it has been very hard to get popcorn lately; Boom Chicka Pop has all but disappeared from the shelves, and so I have resorted to Skinny Pop and the ridiculously and kind of offensively-named Lesser Evil. I know. I know. I probably brought the Boom Chicka Pop shortage on myself for purchasing such a stupid item that applies a moral valuation to food, which I am against on principle. But needs must, sometimes.

Every two or three weeks, right after my Superstore visit, I head to Costco which, happily, has an opening time exactly one hour after Superstore. The later I get to Costco, the more disorganized the parking lot is, so for my own psychological health I try to get there as close to nine as possible. But sometimes, it doesn’t happen.

Let’s circle back to Cart Karma. Cart Karma, for those unfamiliar with the concept I have been broaching lo these many years, is that if you rescue a stranded cart from the parking lot, you will have a great shopping experience. I know it’s just one cart among many, but like the story of the child throwing starfish back into the sea, you might not be able to save them all but you can save THIS one. I remind myself of that every shopping trip, as I look in despair at all the carts stranded in parking spaces and awkwardly shoved onto the medians. I can save this one. It can feel overwhelming, but every cart we save makes a difference.

A few weeks ago, this is what I saw:

Even for Costco, this was a new low. You will notice in the background a cart in the parking space: that’s standard. But this, this is in the middle of the ROADWAY where people DRIVE. People driving into the parking lot would have to maneuver their cars around it, and I am not going to live in that kind of world. There were many unsaved carts to choose from but I chose this one. NOT ON MY WATCH, PEOPLE.

I saved that cart and I had a great shopping experience: no lineups, no crowds in the famously-crowded produce section, almond butter at a much-lower price than normal which is notable because everything else is much-higher, and my favourite dried strawberries were available. Dried strawberries are only available a couple times a year, and so even though I am trying not to overstock my pantry, I stocked up. (My husband, later, looked at the receipt with puzzlement. “You spent $58 on strawberries? What…kind of strawberries?” For the record, it was six bags of strawberries and that should last me a solid six months.)

Let us compare that shopping trip to the one before that. I don’t know, I was just exhausted to start out with. It took over ten minutes to just get into the parking lot, as the lineup for the gas station – selling gas at a ten cent discount – snaked through the entrances and precluded anyone from pulling in. By the time I got into the parking lot, with a trunk full of perishable and frozen items from Superstore, I just felt defeated. Faced with all the carts, I slipped into despair for all of humanity, and I couldn’t pull myself up enough to save a cart. I felt like the weight of the world was on my cart-saving shoulders, and I just couldn’t. I walked past all the many stranded carts (pick me, Nicole, pick me!) and took one from the lineup at the entry.

And I had a Very Poor Shopping Experience. Proof! Cart karma works! There were no berries in the produce section, there was no lemon juice – did anyone else notice the blip in Real Lemon supply? – and the lineups were insane. I also had a very strange run-in with a man while I was in the lineup.

It happened when I had been in line for at least eight minutes, and I was next up at the cashier. I was standing the requisite six feet back, giving the fellow in front of me plenty of room to unload. My phone pinged with a text, and I glanced down to look at it. I could hear the man behind me say, somewhat aggressively, “Move your CAAAART.”

Startled, I turned back to look at him, my eyes wide. He gave me a quick smile and said “You know, like that Ikea commercial! Move the caaaaar!” He laughed, like it was a joke, giving me a hand signal that is the Universal Sign of “Go, go.”

Two things: the Ikea commercial in reference is “Get the caaaaaar!” not “Move the caaaaaar!” and also, the fellow in front of me was still unloading and we are in a point in time where we do not crowd other people or bump their legs with our carts. What a time to be alive. Still startled, I nodded politely, and moved my cart forward less than one inch, in the Universal Sign of “I acknowledge your statement, but I shall not acquiesce to your request in any meaningful way.”

This was when I realized that my Cart Karma was lacking, and I had to do something to change it. I turned around and said, in the sweetest possible voice, “You know what, why don’t you go ahead of me? You have so few things and I have so many.” Let me tell you, the look on this gentleman’s face, this person who had behaved rudely but tried to pretend he hadn’t, was worth the price of admission. It was the picture of shock. I insisted he unload, as I moved my cart backwards. He thanked me several times as he unloaded, thanking me again as he wheeled his cart away. I smiled behind my mask, thinking about heaping coals of kindness on my enemy’s head.

It was worth the extra few minutes; by the time I got back to the parking lot I was in a gloriously good mood, despite my lack of lemon juice, and I made every green light on the way home.

Weekly Reading

Sorrow and Bliss. This was a very intense and moving book about a woman living with a hereditary mental illness; the author note states that this is a fictional mental illness, and it is referred to in the book as ____. I found this book compellingly readable and extraordinarily written, but I’m not going to across-the-board recommend it due to trigger warnings all over the place, notably suicide and pregnancy loss. If you’re okay with these topics though, I think you’ll like it. Ultimately, it’s a hopeful book, although it’s a bit of a roller coaster. It really shows how mental illness affects everyone involved, and I found my emotions were all over the place when I read it.

Heating and Cooling. Sometimes I am just blown away by talent, and this was one of those times. This woman can WRITE. I am always amazed at the depth that someone can write, in very few words. I say this after I wrote 1500 words about shopping carts. This book though. It’s a collection of “micro memoirs,” some of which are only a paragraph or two long, and the author conveys a novel’s worth of thought into each one. Absolutely incredible.

The Last Story of Mina Lee. And with that, my streak of incredible books came to a thudding halt. This wasn’t terrible. But neither was it particularly good. It had so much potential – a first generation Korean woman explores her late mother’s stories and life, discovering secrets and finally coming to understand her. It had potential but ultimately fell flat for me.

Also something that sadly fell flat for me? The Elvis movie. I wanted to LOVE it, and it was interesting enough but way too long and with not enough music or details about Elvis’ life. There was SO much detail about Colonel Parker, who was essentially criminal, and I guess that was the point of the movie. But I wanted more Elvis and Priscilla! I will have to look out my old, falling-apart edition of Elvis and Me, I guess. Have a beautiful week, friends! Save a cart! xo

Five For Friday: Nature, New Things, and No Soliciting

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  • New Dishes. I have a very loose, “let’s see how this goes” goal of making one new thing for dinner each week, or, trying one new recipe. These are two different things as I am notoriously poor at following recipes when it comes to dinners. I am essentially one of those people who I loathed when I worked at YMC, a person who changes pretty much every element in a recipe, and then comments on that recipe, but without the commenting part. So, I guess not at all like a person I loathed. In any case, this week’s new recipe was cold quinoa salad with lots of veggies and edamame, a Thai-inspired dressing, and crispy chickpeas and lentils. If you’ve never had crispy lentils, I recommend it: I tossed some drained and rinsed canned lentils in olive oil, salt, and pepper and roasted them at 400 convection for about 20 minutes; they are small little things so I wasn’t sure how long to do it, and I checked on them every five minutes. My whole family loved it, I repeat, my family of meat-lovers LOVED THE LENTILS. I normally dislike leftovers and never eat them, but I put aside a small container for myself, as it was a perfect lunch to take on our hike the next day.
  • The Path Sometimes Taken. I also have a loose goal to go to the mountains More Often, which is about as loose a goal as one can get. Yesterday the boys and I hiked around Stewart Canyon which is about seven kilometres and not as much elevation as I typically like in a hike, but it was a lovely day. Once we reached the end of the trail, there was a small path with a sign that said “Warning: Path Ahead Not Maintained,” so of course, we took it to see what would happen. What happened is that we had to climb over many fallen trees until we got to the point where the path was completely blocked, at which point we turned back and ate the afore-mentioned lunch.
  • There’s A Sign, Read It. Speaking of signs, we have a No Soliciting one on our mailbox. At least ten years ago, but probably more, our doorbell stopped working. I asked my husband, who is very handy and who has repaired many, many things in our house over the past 22 years, to please NOT fix it. At the time, I was home alone most days, and the only people ringing the doorbell were door-to-door solicitors, and I am never going to want to save money on my heating bills or purchase a paper copy of the Calgary Herald. If I was having company, I’d watch for people at the door, and all my friends know to knock, anyway. This was great for a time – it’s pretty easy to not answer the door when there’s no doorbell – but then solicitors started knocking. Can I just say the best thing about 2020 was that door-to-door soliciting stopped? Anyway, sometime in 2021 it restarted, which is when we put the sign on our mailbox, which is directly beside our door. Yesterday I was relaxing after our hike, reading, and I heard a very loud knock at the door. I looked up, thinking it was a delivery and wondering what we had delivered, when I saw a man looking in the window at me reading in my chair. I could see he had a lanyard and a Telus uniform, and I just knew, the way you know about a good melon, that he was here to talk to me about changing internet service providers. I opened the door, and as soon as he greeted me, I said “I have a No Soliciting sign, and I ask that you please respect it.” I said it pleasantly and politely, with my face arranged in a pleasant and polite way, and then I shut the door. I could see him lift up his hands and shake his head in a what’s with this woman kind of way and I will tell you, I was VERY annoyed. This is the second such interaction in as many weeks. The first was a fellow with no lanyard and no uniform who told me he was selling “organic meat and seafood,” which a) ew, b) I eat neither meat nor seafood, not that he would know that, c) who sells MEAT door-to-door, d) we are in land-locked Alberta, SEAFOOD, really, e) this sounds like a scam, and f) I HAVE A NO SOLICITING SIGN ON MY DOOR. I could have pointed out any of those things but I went with f. Anyway, after yesterday’s interaction I found myself unaccountably enraged. I mean, over-the-top, screaming-into-the-void enraged. I immediately texted my very good friend and neighbour Taryn (HI TARYN) and asked her if I was overreacting. She very gently said that I had every right to feel that way but also, perhaps, my emotions were near the surface as I didn’t have a fuzzy companion by my side when I opened the door. She was 100% right, of course. I went into the garden to calm down a little.
  • Bzzz Bzzz Bzzz. I have been spending a lot of time in my garden this week; Tuesday was a particularly low and sad day, but I found it healing to watch the giant fat bumblebees buzzing around. They seem to love the flowers just below the kitchen window, and I could watch them forever, collecting their pollen, as busy and purposeful as can be. The first of my daylilies are blooming, my roses are just about to, and my columbines are putting on a glorious show. This weekend I will have my THIRD cutting of kale, which is the upside to this very cool and rainy start to the summer. It’s maybe not great for the rest of the garden, but I have a tiny little pepper on one of my plants, so there’s hope.

  • Reliable? Or “Reliable?” This sign is on my running route and it cracks me up every time I pass it.

Happy Friday, friends! xo

A Hair Affair

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I had a haircut last week, which is an infrequent enough occurrence that it merits a mention. It’s hard for me to believe that, pre-2020, I had a professional cut and colour every five to six weeks. Looking back, it feels like that was a grievous waste of time and money. I remember asking long-haired friends, mid-2020, how frequently they cut their hair and the average answer was, at best, two to three times a YEAR. This was eye-opening for me, to say the least.

It sounds silly, but the realization, back in April 2020, that I could easily and effectively colour my own hair was incredibly empowering and life-changing. I know, I know. But I had been going to a salon for colour for over two decades at that point, so I really didn’t know how great home hair colour is, how easy it is to apply, not to mention the massive savings of time and money. I mean, a box of Garnier is about 5% the cost of a salon visit, and I don’t need to book off an entire afternoon to refresh my colour; I can do it whenever my roots start to irritate me, which is every four weeks at the very most.

This brings me to what I have been wanting to say for the past eighteen months or so, and that is that I have been going to a new hair salon. This is the fourth time I have had my hair cut by this very lovely young woman, and I have never been happier with my hair. She is incredibly patient and doesn’t say a word about the state of my ends, which, with 5-6 months between cuts, are quite scraggly and dry. She shows me exactly how much she is going to cut off, and then she does it, without any surprises. She doesn’t lecture me on colouring my own hair, even if I have roots showing. She DOES tell me I should wear my hair down more, to cut down on breakage, but I accept her professional opinion while not generally adhering to it.

I am very happy with this new salon, but I feel low-level embarrassment and shame about leaving my old salon, which brings me to the question: how do you break up with your hair stylist?

Typically, if you are unhappy with or outgrow a service or a consumer good, you simply just stop patronizing or purchasing it. If you have a poor experience with a restaurant, you just stop going to that restaurant. If you outgrow or change so that the goods you consume no longer suit you, it’s easy to just stop purchasing them. This is just part of life, if it wasn’t, we would all still be using Aussie Scrunch Spray in our spiral permed hair and wearing Lip Smackers and using Wet & Wild nail polish, we’d be reading Sassy magazine and shopping at Mariposa, and yes I know that some of these things are no longer in existence. Nonetheless! Change is part of life, and we have power as consumers to vote with our dollars and feet.

But I think we can all agree that changing hair stylists is Another Thing Altogether. The relationship between a woman and her hair stylist is an intimate one and is based on trust that is built up over the years. No other service is quite so intimate, except perhaps estheticians that work on the bikini line. I mean, the woman who does my euphemistically-named Bikini Plus body sugaring sees me completely naked from the waist down, and has me put my legs in positions that would make me blush if I wasn’t basically dead inside when it comes to Intimate Esthetics. Other than the long-suffering Body Sugar Woman, the hair stylist holds the title for Most Intimate.

I was with my previous hair stylist for nineteen years, which, at the time that I last saw her, was almost as long as I had been married. I don’t want to go into too much detail here, but when I last saw her in September 2020, my visit left so much to be desired, and was so disappointing on a number of levels, that I felt I needed to start the search for a new stylist. My hair, which I had been growing out, was shorter than I wanted, my layers, which I had been growing out with the help from that same stylist since December 2018, were more pronounced, and the colour was way darker than anything I had ever had before. This wasn’t the first time I had been disappointed by my cut and colour, but it was the first time I had been disappointed after I realized that I could easily colour my own hair for a fraction of the cost, and that long hair just doesn’t need to be trimmed that often.

It has taken me this long to actually write about it, which really says something about my feelings. This brings me back to the original question: what would you do? I will tell you what I did do, and I feel Low Level Shame about it, and that is that I just stopped going to her. I didn’t make another appointment. When I received a text from her, I didn’t respond.

Did I ghost her?

I feel like I DID, but yet, what was to be done? As I said, if I was disappointed in the service of a restaurant, or even a nail salon, I would just patronize another establishment. But after nineteen years, I disappeared without a trace, and I feel weird about it to this day.

I try to think about it in terms of my yoga classes. If someone stopped coming to class, would I want them to tell me why? I would if the answer was that the time was no longer convenient, or they moved and the drive was too far, or anything else that was beyond my control. But if the answer was that they hated my teaching style or my voice or my personality, well, then, I probably would not want to know. I think I’d rather just be ghosted.

Weekly Reading

After my run of cancer memoirs and death memoirs and serious non-fiction, I decided to migrate some available titles that were on my For Later list to my Hold List, and they came in mid-week, which turned out to be perfect timing.

How To Pronounce Knife. Oh wow, I absolutely LOVED this collection of short stories! Each story is about a Lao refugee and the immigrant experience, and each is from a completely unique point of view. Every story is captivating, compelling, and incredibly moving. I didn’t want to put it down and I didn’t want it to end. It’s been a while since that happened. Thanks to Allison (HI ALLISON) for the recommendation.

The Inner Life of Animals. This was a wonderfully interesting read about animals and their lives. Ravens mate for life, there have been documented inter species adoptions, and goats are quite the disciplinarians. It was a delight to read, animal lovers will adore it. There is a small section on moths, which are, as we know from last week, not my favourite creatures, but I am trying to look at them in a different light now. I’M GROWING AS A PERSON. Relatedly, there is an anthill in my backyard and I discovered it when I went to weed one of the garden beds, and when I say “discovered,” I mean I stepped on it and I had ants swarming sockless feet and bare legs. I tried to brush them off and they swarmed my arms and got inside my gardening gloves. It was, shall we say, unpleasant. Instinctively, I am sad to say, I thought about going into the house and boiling a kettle of water to pour on the hill, but then I stopped: that seemed like an unnecessarily cruel action given that they were just doing what they are supposed to do. I mean, if they were in my house it would be a different story, but they were as far away from the house as could possibly be, and so I thought live and let live and just went on with my weeding, from another, far-away-from-the-ant-hill angle.

The Right Swipe. This was a cute and kind of smutty piece of brain candy. The creator of a dating app meets an ex-football player who is the nephew of a dating website owner…there are twists and turns but of course it ends the way it should, for a light romance. Fun fact: I never remember if it’s swipe right or swipe left if you like someone – dating apps were way before my time, but now I’ll remember (right is the right one). This is part of the Modern Love series, and I read the third one last summer (First Comes Like). Each book is a separate entity, so there is no need to read them in order, which is good, because I didn’t.

Yours Cheerfully. This was a delightful and charming sequel to the delightful and charming Dear Mrs Bird; a plucky young magazine correspondent befriends women working at a munitions factory during WWII. The problem is many women are mothers…and childcare is hard to find. How can they support the war effort and care for the children? It’s a wonderful read with a real women-supporting-women theme. Imagine everyone pulling together for a common goal? IMAGINE. I read the first half of this on Friday, a dark, cold, rainy day on which Roe v Wade was overturned, meaning our nearest neighbours lost fundamental rights and agency over their own bodies, and I kept thinking of these themes. There was a line in the book that said “some women want to support women, and some women don’t,” and boy, isn’t that the truth. Anyway, it was a wonderfully uplifting book for a very sad weekend.

The news seems to get worse every day, so I will leave you these images of Barkley, apparently playing hide and seek with me. Stay strong, my friends. xo

Look At Me, I’m Growing

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All Is Well, I Hope

First of all, thank you so much for all your lovely comments about my mysterious, asymptomatic ailment, but a special thanks to Erin (HI ERIN) for sharing her story and reminding us that yes, we should be vigilant on following doctor’s orders when it comes to infections. I hasten to assure you that I did indeed finish my round of antibiotics and have been instructed to go for follow-up lab work, as apparently “lack of symptoms” is not a reliable indicator for being infection-free in my case.

A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall

We have had a lot of rain, and a few really crazy rainy days in the past few weeks, to the point of the declaration of a State Of Local Emergency, which is fairly alarming. Much less alarming, but still of personal concern, is Salvadore’s cleanliness, or lack thereof.

He became very muddy during the downpours. I brought him inside not once, but twice to give him a bath.

As I toweled him off, my older son looked at me with some concern. “Are you okay, Mom? I think you might be having a midlife crisis.” I am having a midlife crisis! And it is entirely manifesting in gnome-related care. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I am going to go sing a lullaby to my gnome.

Hurry! Or Your Memories Will Be Lost Forever And It Will Be All Your Fault.

Speaking of midlife crises, the ongoing saga between me and the graduation photography company continues. I am still getting emails about my son’s graduation photos, but they have taken on a whole new ominous level: if I don’t order soon, they will be deleted and lost forever. Deleted! Lost forever! Okay, photography company. That’s a bridge too far. I am almost at the point of unsubscribing but I haven’t got the photos from the grad ceremony yet, and by the time that happens my younger son will be posing for grad photos. I’m caught in a trap, I can’t walk out.

Fly High, Free Moth

If you know me at all, you know I have a mild phobia of moths. What you don’t know is that I have been working very hard to overcome this phobia, and I have had ample opportunity to do it because at least once a day I notice a small fluttering somewhere in the house, often first thing in the morning when I’m on my yoga mat. I try to breathe through it, thinking calmly, the moth is just living its life, just like I am, it is not going to bother me, it’s fine, ommmm. Generally this works but the other day there was a tiny moth on the cupboard where the coffee mugs are kept. I calmly took out my mug, poured some coffee, repeating my mantra, when the moth leapt (leapt?) off the cupboard door and fluttered right in my face. Luckily I didn’t scald myself by dropping the coffee. I congratulated myself on not freaking out and just stepped back away from the fluttering, at which point the moth fluttered down and flew INTO THE TOASTER.

What to do, what to do. I waited for a moment, thinking that surely the moth would fly out the way it flew in but no, no, this did not happen. I thought about what would happen if I just left everything as-is. Would the moth get toasted the next time someone wanted a bagel? Would I be the person to inadvertently eat a toasted moth with toasted bread? But how to get a moth out of a toaster? I turned it upside down and shook it. I took out the crumb tray and still, no moth exited that I could see. I tapped the toaster frantically thinking that maybe the moth would fly out. I sat down and drank a cup of coffee and stared off into space for a while. Eventually I used a flashlight to peek into the toaster and I could not see a moth so I figured it either somehow escaped without me noticing or it immediately died and disintegrated. I cleaned out the crumb tray an extra time to be sure.

It’s Lilac Season, Motherfuckers

The lilac bushes are in bloom all over the city, including, of course, my yard, and it’s absolutely glorious. I love lilacs so much; when I was a kid I wished so hard that we had our own lilac bush, because my long-suffering mother would not let me pull blooms off of neighbouring bushes FOR SOME REASON (HI MOM). Instead I would have to be satisfied with just sticking my face into the blooms on my way to and from school, and I still stick my face into blooms on my walks around the neighbourhood. Barkley stops to sniff, I stop to sniff, our walks are even slower than normal. Every day I walk around the yard to check out the gardens and I spend some time smelling the lilacs.

Other exciting garden news: I have rows of tiny lettuce and carrots, and rows of larger peas; one of my zucchinis has blooms already – IT BEGINS – and on Sunday I harvested some kale and Romaine for a salad. My Siberian iris started with one bloom and then exploded, and the columbines are all budding.

The yard is pretty soggy with all the rain which is making weeding difficult, but I’m in that happy place of having Vigorous Perennials in every bed, which cuts down on the weeds significantly. Consider this your helpful gardening tip of the day: plant perennials that want to take over the world, and the weeds will not stand a chance. I feel like there’s a Life Metaphor in there somewhere.

Weekly Reading

No one asked, but I am going to tell you how I decide what book to read next: in addition to a select few books that I own and haven’t read yet, I have a “For Later” list of 233 books on my library app. Every once in a while I will migrate some books from “For Later” onto my “Hold” list, depending on their availability, trying to time things so that I don’t get 12 non-renewable books all at once, which is what happened to me earlier this month. When this happens, I read the ones that are due first, which has meant that, coincidentally, I have read a LOT of memoirs and non-fiction books lately.

Left on Tenth. I wanted to like this. I did not like this. It sounded like something I would like: two widowed people finding love again in their seventies, but there was so much medical detail about a cancer diagnosis and subsequent treatment that I just felt exhausted and sad reading it. Also, the writing style was so choppy and disjointed that I found it difficult to focus. It could be that my reaction was because it was Another Cancer Memoir, in a long line of Memoirs, so perhaps take my review with a grain of salt.

Butter Honey Pig Bread. This was an interesting and beautifully-written novel about a woman who is an Ogbanje – a spirit who dies repeatedly in childhood and is reborn – and her twin daughters, who are somewhat estranged after one experiences a childhood trauma. Thanks to Allison (HI ALLISON) for the recommendation.

They Left Us Everything. OH GREAT, ANOTHER MEMOIR ABOUT DEATH, AND BONUS, THERE IS A WHOLE CHAPTER ON PUTTING DOWN THE DEAD MOTHER’S ELDERLY DOG. So clearly I was not in the greatest headspace to read this memoir of a woman going through her deceased parents’ home and possessions after their passing. To be fair, I did enjoy parts of it; there were some interesting stories and I liked thinking about the things I inherited from my own grandmas that are important to me and would not be at all important to anyone else – one example would be all the old magazines with Princess Diana that my Grandma Fern kept. Grandma and I watched the Royal Wedding live at 2am back in 1981, and it is one of my best memories. But the rest of the book I found to be sad and upsetting, particularly the stories about her childhood memories of her parents and her parents’ marriage. Those were distressing at best. Still, some thought-provoking parts about the nature of stuff and our attachment to things, and the memories they hold. The author believes that you should NOT go through your stuff before you die but leave everything for your kids to deal with, which I do not agree with. The author lived in this house for 16 months, going through what sounds like hoarder-level possessions, and who among us has the time to do that?

On that note, I will leave you with a teaser for my upcoming Nicole’s Favourite Things, coming this week. In the meantime, take care and keep growing and shining, you crazy diamonds. xo

A Medical Mystery

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What’s the opposite of a hypochondriac? Whatever it is, I think I am one.

I had my annual physical this week, and my doctor has started giving me the lab requisition prior to my appointments, so we can discuss the results together. I have never had any issue with my lab work with one exception: I have a weirdly low white blood cell count, which is something that sounds pretty alarming. If you look up “low white blood cell count” the first dozen or so results will be cancer in various forms, followed by autoimmune things like lupus and AIDS. Another possible reason for low white blood cells is low Vitamin B12 levels, but my Vitamin B12 levels are absurdly high, along with my iron levels, which is fairly unusual considering my plant-based diet. In any case, I’ve had low white blood cells for many years, and I’m not dead yet, or incapacitated in any way, so I guess that’s just the way it is for me. My doctor agrees, saying some people just have lower than normal levels; it’s one of those weird unexplained things, and I’m fine with being weird and unexplained.

Anyway, other than that small and strange issue, my lab work is always just fine, so I was very surprised to get a phone call from the doctor’s office a few weeks ago. I was in Superstore, because where else would I be if not grocery shopping, and the nurse informed me that my lab results were back and I have a bladder infection, and so she would call in an antibiotic prescription to the pharmacist near me. Imagine, if you will, feeling perfectly normal and healthy, standing beside the red peppers with a mesh produce bag in one hand, talking through a mask to a nurse who is telling you that you have a bladder infection, while other shoppers dart around you and your giant cart, trying to grab a pepper, with soft mellow music playing in the background. “A bladder infection?” I said, “I don’t think I have one.” She said that I sure did, and listed off the symptoms of such an infection, familiar to all of us, but not applicable to me at that moment.

While still shopping, my husband texted me to say that the pharmacy had called, and I had a prescription ready? The pharmacist was confused since I haven’t had a prescription in a decade or so, and my husband was confused because he “didn’t know I was sick,” and I was confused by the whole thing. By that time I had only made it to the bakery section, and they didn’t have the pitas I like. On my way home I picked up the prescription and then I put it in the cupboard and forgot about it.

I figured that if I developed symptoms, I would certainly take the antibiotics; we were going into the long weekend and what is worse than getting a bladder infection or UTI and having to wait to see the doctor, but if I’m being honest, I thought the lab maybe made a mistake. I mean, wouldn’t I KNOW if I had a bladder infection? If you know, you know, I thought.

Fast-forward to my doctor’s appointment and after all the usual things, he brought up my “recent bladder infection” and asked if the antibiotics cleared it up, at which point I told him that I never took the antibiotics because I didn’t think I had an infection. This led to a careful examination of my results, an assurance that my name and health care number was right there, and a gentle admonition that Some People Can Have Infections With No Symptoms.

Me: But wouldn’t I KNOW?

Doctor: Usually, but not always.

Me: Can it clear up on its own? I feel fine.

Doctor: On some occasions your immune system might fight it off for a while, but untreated infections can go into the bloodstream and cause sepsis.

Me: I am pretty sure I would know if I had sepsis.

Doctor: Well, yes. You’d be delirious and probably hospitalized. That’s why we don’t let it get to that point. That’s why I prescribed the antibiotics.

Huh. Solid point. He went on to say that perhaps my symptoms present differently, and was I feeling a bit more tired lately? That could be it.

Come to think of it, I was feeling a bit more tired than usual, but I chalked it up to nightly hot flashes, my son’s graduation, the frenzy of gardening that comes when Calgary gets decent weather, finishing up my yoga classes until September, and an existential crisis about it being June and my sons growing up. But I guess there could be a medical component in there.

This whole thing is WILD to me. I mean, what are the chances that I just happen to have an infection right when I go for lab work? What if this had happened a few months ago? If my only symptom is tiredness, I would never seek medical attention, never. Theoretically, could I be a little bit tired and then go into sepsis? God, I hope not. This is just like when Covid hit our house, and the first person who tested positive was completely asymptomatic the whole way through, and my only symptom was being tired. Should I be suspicious every time I feel a little tired? I’m going through perimenopause here, what is Normal Tired and what is Halfway To Sepsis Tired? What is It’s Been A Long Week And I Need More Sleep Tired and what is Pack Your Bag For The Hospital Tired?

Well. I went home and started the antibiotics, to my husband’s horror – “You mean you DIDN’T take them already? You got those three weeks ago! Why wouldn’t you take what the doctor told you to take?” – and I feel…fine. Less tired? Who can say? If I listen to my body, it’s going to say I’m fine when in reality, who knows? Hopefully by the time you read this I will not have dropped dead from some mysterious ailment with no symptoms.

Is that bad luck to write? I hope not. I feel a little superstitious, but not enough to delete. I’m fine! I’m sure I’m fine.

Weekly Reading

This Is The Story of a Happy Marriage. About halfway through this book of essays is a 40-page essay entitled The Wall, which is about the author’s experience going to the LA Police Academy as research. I felt sure I had read the essay before – most in the book had been previously published – but on examination I didn’t think I read a 40-page essay in the Washington Post in 2007, when my kids were 2 and 3. The next essay – and please keep in mind, people, that by this time I was well over halfway through the book – seemed very familiar too. I looked at my spreadsheet where I record all my books read and discovered that I had already read this, in 2018. Oops. Some of the essays were very much worth a reread, some were not.

Atlas of the Heart. There was so much food for thought in this intelligent, yet easy to read book about connections and emotions. Some chapters really resonated with me. The section on “Bittersweet” summed up exactly how I’m feeling these days and the existential crisis I am having.

“Sadness about letting go of something, mixed with happiness and/ or gratitude about what’s been experienced and/ or what’s next.”

No Cure For Being Human. We all know that life is short and miraculous, and technically we all know we could be living our last day today, but what if you REALLY knew today could be your last day? What if you were living with an incurable and terminal disease and you’d already outlasted expectations? How would you live your life? This is a truly beautiful book about finitude and living within our limitations as people. I read her first book, but in my opinion this one is much better and more uplifting.

And now, my dear friends, I shall pass the microphone on to you. Where do you land on the hypochondriac scale? Have you ever had a medical issue without knowing you had a medical issue? Are you having an existential crisis of any kind? Have you ever read more than half a book before realizing you had already read it? Tell me everything. xo

Maybe She’s Born With It, Maybe It’s Maybelline; 111 Weeks In

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Very frequently, of late, I have looked into the mirror and noticed what I thought was mascara smudged under my eyes. Each and every time, I try to remove the smudged mascara only to realize that it is not smudged mascara at all: it is just my skin, and that is how it looks now. Since this happens almost daily, you would think that I wouldn’t be surprised by this, but you would be wrong. I am surprised, every time.

My undereye circles are a bit more pronounced this week; I have been just a little short on sleep for several nights in a row. It turns out that those fifteen or twenty minutes each night start to add up, and I’ve been feeling just a little bit tired.

There was a parent meeting for my son’s club wrestling, and it was in person. I was so startled by this turn of events, I hardly knew what to do. I was waiting for information on a zoom link, and when the information came that the meeting would be in person, at the university, you would think that someone would have told me that I was slated to perform an interpretive dance in front of an audience of 1000. What do I do, where do I go, what do I wear, how is this going to work? It was fine, of course, although it has been over two years since I have been in a room with thirty other people. It has also been almost 25 years since I was at that part of the university, and it was very fun to walk by the fitness centre and the racquet centre, places I used to spend considerable amounts of time at, and that have – not surprisingly – changed a great deal.

There are lots of changes afoot. The people that bought the house next door, and are renovating it completely, are so nice and I am so looking forward to having them as my neighbours, not just because I think they will be a lovely addition to our neighbourhood, but also because that will mean that their renovations will be complete.

I see the gentleman a few times a week, on the occasions that I happen to be outside when he’s checking on the progress of the renovation. We always have a quick chat and he always says, in the most amiable way, “I hope the noise isn’t bothering you too much!” to which I respond, perkily, “No, no, it doesn’t bother me at all!” And that’s true! Mostly.

I am a person who can easily absorb loud noises and just go on with life; it’s almost like the sounds of hammering and beeping and what have you becomes white noise to me, with the exception of the afternoon that they jackhammered out the front steps and walkway. When that happened, my whole house shook intermittently for two hours, and my nerves, people. I kept repeating my favourite coping line, stolen from Allison (HI ALLISON) a decade ago: there will be a time after this. There will be a time after the jackhammering.

But mostly, it’s been just fine. I don’t have any babies or small children for whom the noise might disturb their sleep schedules, and the dog is almost completely deaf, so he is unbothered. The only problem came last weekend, when it appeared that the workers were on some kind of deadline, perhaps to coordinate trades for the week ahead. For five days straight they worked until 10pm.

For normal people, I am sure that wouldn’t be an issue, and if you were standing on the street, you probably wouldn’t have noticed, but the side of the house they were working on was the one nearest my bedroom, and 10pm is over an hour past my bedtime. I lay awake, hearing the hammering of…pipes? I don’t really know what they were doing. There will be a time after this. This is temporary. It took me a long while after they finished work to fall asleep, and I repeated my sleep mantra, which is My body is resting, even if I don’t sleep I am still resting my body. I generally find that soothing enough to fall asleep without becoming stressed out and anxious that I’m not sleeping enough.

The construction is temporary, the neighbours are not, right? I like all our neighbours; I cannot stress enough how important it is to me that the neighbours and I get along. There is absolutely nothing to be gained by a feud between neighbours; I will do anything to keep the peace, including never saying anything about workmen being noisy right up until the bylaw deadline. After all, over the past 22 years our neighbours have been wonderful, and that includes the times when we have had swarms of children in our yard, jumping on the trampoline and screaming, and also my son’s daily drum practice. I feel grateful to have had such fantastic people of all ages and personalities living nearby, and I just know our new neighbours are going to be lovely.

And the more work they do on the house, late in the day, the faster the renovation will be done. Right? Right. In any case, I got a little more sleep last night, downgrading my undereye circles from Raccoon to Lightly Smudged Mascara.

Pandemic Reading

The Ex-Boyfriend Yard Sale. When a broke actress finds herself in major credit card debt, she tries to think of ways to raise money: what if she sold the items given to her by ex-boyfriends? The idea of valuing such items turned into a one-woman stage show, and then, obviously, this book. She enlisted the help of mathematicians and economic theorists to create a formula for valuing gifts from exes, and the value the exes brought to her life. The economic theory and math was fun to read, and for me, it made this book a worthwhile read. However.

Listen, we have all had our share of bad relationships and made our share of bad decisions. What would it be to read a memoir in which no bad choices were made and everything was just fine. AND YET. I found myself constantly frustrated with and disappointed in the author. MAKE BETTER CHOICES, MY GOD. If a man has sex with you for three years, and yet refuses to be called your boyfriend, that is not just a red flag, it is an entire skyscraper ensconced in red velvet. If a man tells you he doesn’t want to be in a relationship with you, don’t keep trying to be in a relationship. Even if he does “give you six orgasms” or an orgasm that “lasts three minutes” every time you have sex (which, what?). There is a part where she tells him everything she wants in their relationship, and people, this is THREE PAGES LONG and lists everything from “spending every holiday together, just the two of us” to “never letting our sexual desire fade” (understandable, given the six-orgasms-per-sexual-encounter), to “buying a sectional for snuggling.” After this three page monologue, the guy says that he doesn’t want any of those things, and he cannot give her any of those things, AND YET SHE PERSISTS IN TRYING TO HAVE A RELATIONSHIP WITH HIM. Girl, this is a booty call. He is not spousal material. The whole time I was reading this, I kept thinking, girl, no. Just no. Stop calling him. I don’t know, maybe I’m just getting too old to read these kinds of memoirs.

Whoa, that was a long review. I have feelings, I guess. Moving on.

The Story Hour. I enjoyed this book about the relationship between two women; one from India, the other her psychiatrist. Midway through I thought I knew where it was going, but it turns out I didn’t at all. I like that. The major theme was the mistakes that we make, how we atone for them, and can we forgive others’ mistakes as well as our own. Thrity Umrigar is a real talent; her ability to craft characters that are multi-dimensional is breathtaking. It also made me think about the judgements we make about people, and how there is always so much more to their stories than what we see.

It’s been a more social week than usual; lots of visits with friends, so I’m feeling happy coming into May. May! Already! Every month it feels shocking to change the calendar. Happy May to you, my friends. xo