Category Archives: Okanagan Life

Maybe

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As much as I love my own clothing, I also love admiring other people’s outfits and sartorial choices. Seeing a young teen in the height of summer wearing black tights, boots, and ripped denim shorts, accessorized with bright red lipstick and a look of general angst makes me smile with nostalgia. It reminds me of a period of my own youth; ditto the young women swanning chillily around the Costco freezer aisles clad only in crop tops and booty shorts. I also love seeing older ladies with their matching shoes and handbags, statement necklaces coordinating with their blouses and elastic-waist pants. That will be me one day! I mean, it may be me now.

Rarely do I have this same we are one feeling with clean-cut white men in their sixties, but I did recently when I spotted such a person wearing a Che Guevara t-shirt at Superstore. Che Guevara! What a statement! I had one of those myself, circa 1990, although mine was red while this gentleman’s was green. I mentally saluted him.

No longer do I have my red Che tee, but I wear this ekaminhale tank in honour of Canada Day.

Kelowna is a summer-tourist town, and so traffic is definitely heavier at this time of year. Since I lived most of my life in Calgary, I refer to Kelowna traffic as “traffic,” in that it might now take you 15-20 minutes to get basically anywhere, as opposed to 10-15. It means literally nothing to me, but it must mean a lot to some people, judging by the fellow who was behind me when I was on my way to Superstore to pick up groceries and send admiring thoughts to 60-year-old Che Guevara fans.

I was stopped at a red light, waiting to turn right. The person in front of me was also stopped, and although there was a small gap in traffic (“traffic”), she hesitated. Maybe she was waiting for a bigger gap. Maybe she was worried a pedestrian was going to cross. I don’t know, but her pause prior to turning was approximately three seconds long. At that point, the man behind me had had enough. He laid on his horn – for longer than the woman was stopped – and when I looked in my rearview mirror he was gesturing, his mouth moving violently. Unless my lip-reading skills fail me, he was cursing this woman and her cautious approach to driving.

Of course after the turn I found myself directly beside the man at the next red light, who was again gesturing and, apparently, swearing. I wondered how miserable life must be in order for someone to be that worked up by what could be, at most, a tiny blip of a delay. Maybe he’s getting a divorce, I thought to myself. Maybe his wife died. Maybe his child is in the ICU at the hospital and he just wants to go home and shower before returning to be by his side. Maybe he lost his job or his investments tanked or he discovered he has cancer. I related this to my husband later, who replied that maybe he was just an asshole.

Well, there’s always that. I did think of my husband’s words later in the week when I was walking Rex. One of our regular routes is on the greenway by a creek, and I cannot emphasize enough how wide this walkway is. It’s designed not only for walkers and runners, but also bikes and horses. Five people could walk abreast easily at any given time. In other words, it is very easy to pass people if need be.

HOT DOG! or, the reason we walk early in the day

I did pass a woman with a small dog; as always, I smiled and said Good morning, to which she said nothing. I didn’t really clock this at the time, since I was immersed in a podcast dissecting, of all things, Mrs Dalloway, and Rex was busy sniffing the ground. We stopped as he investigated the greenery from which the week before a garter snake had emerged; I supposed Rex was waiting to see if the wiggly moving twig was still there. The woman passed me, and I hurried Rex along, an image of him picking up the wiggly moving twig and accidentally crushing it to death floating, Hamlet-like, through my mind.

We walked along sedately, fifteen feet or so behind this woman, when she suddenly stopped. She turned to me furiously and said JUST GO, gesturing wildly in front of her. Rex and I silently walked forward, while the change in perspective from Mrs Dalloway and Clarissa is a significant one played in my ears. From the corner of my eye I could see this woman standing still and staring daggers at me. I kept my gaze forward, wondering what just happened, as I put some distance between us.

Five minutes later I ran into some regulars with their dogs, and as I chatted with them, I could see the woman approach. She stood at a distance, still glaring, her angry energy emanating off of her body, until our small party broke up and went our separate ways.

I don’t know her story. Maybe her dog was once attacked by a big dog, maybe she herself was once attacked by a big dog or by a middle-aged woman in an “I Love Canada” t-shirt, maybe she had a Covid hangover and took social distancing to an extreme, maybe she was just an asshole. But other people exist, and when we leave the confines of our own four walls, we have to figure out how to live in the world as it is.

It reminded me of when I was living in Calgary, only a few months into Life With Rex. We were in – this is an important detail – an off-leash dog park, when a man tore a strip off of me as Rex waggingly approached his dog. Call your goddamn dog! he screamed. What happened? There was no barking or growling or any other questionable behaviour. I quickly went over to him. My dog’s in heat! Get your dog under control! the man yelled, as Rex stood by obliviously, happily wagging.

This happened during a time in which I was under immense, non-dog-related stress. My nervous system was shot. I was completely unprepared to be verbally accosted by a stranger in the dog park, and so I apologized – I APOLOGIZED – as I leashed Rex and led him away. It did not occur to me until later that a) while Rex is male, he has no testicles, and would not be an impregnation threat, and b) WHO TAKES A DOG IN HEAT TO AN OFF-LEASH PARK?

An asshole, that’s who. This was three and a half years ago, and I still cannot come up with a compassionate, empathetic story about this man. My conclusion is he’s just an asshole, and a really stupid one at that.

Weekly Reading

I’m having a book flood right now! I had paused all my holds for our trip, and now they are all coming in. I finish one book and two more are waiting for me at the library. It’s a lovely problem to have, particularly since the guys went to Vancouver for some World Cup watch parties, so I’ve had a lot of uninterrupted reading time.

Lady Tremaine. This retelling of the Cinderella story through the stepmother’s point of view was very entertaining. It went in directions I did not see and had a very satisfying ending. A happy ever after, but different? I really enjoyed it.

Cleo Dang Would Rather Be Dead. Canadian author alert! Also, dead baby alert. Halfway through this book about a woman whose baby dies at birth, I flipped to the acknowledgements, where my suspicion was confirmed: this author did write this sad story based on her own experience. What it lacks in tight plot and storyline it more than makes up for in emotion and a realistic portrayal of what it is like to live out every parent’s worst nightmare. She writes about the difficulties of watching her best friend having a baby – that lived – on the exact same day as hers died, of going to friend’s baby showers, and of navigating well-meaning but draining and awkward interactions with the public. It’s a story of grief but also of hope, and the author wanted to break the silence around the tragedy that is infant death. I’m glad I read it, and I will read more from this author.

Dog Person. It’s been a while since I’ve read a book by this author, and this, her latest, is a very charming and sweet story about a grieving man who is faced with losing the bookstore he ran with his late partner. The twist? It’s told from their dog’s point of view, who has been tasked with finding someone for the widower to love again. As a warning: the dog is old. We all know what happens in books in which the dog is old, so BE WARNED. But, like having a dog, the joy is worth the end. What a darling book, with such a great first line: “There are two kinds of people in this world: dog people, and people who still need to meet the right dog.”

With the guys away, Rex has been enjoying my undivided attention. My younger son thought that a book written from Rex’s point of view would be 300 pages of Mom Mom Mom I love Mom Mom Mom treat Mom Mom Mom walkies walkies with Mom I love Mom Mom Mom oh no she’s getting in the car without me when will she be back when will she be back when will she SHE’S BACK YAY Mom Mom Mom I love Mom. I mean, it might not be a bestseller, but it would be a bestseller to me. xo

Five For Friday: The Hoppy Little Updates Edition

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Horse With No Name. For the past thirty-five years or so, my younger brother and I have had a running April Fool’s joke, the punch line of which involves a dead horse. I cannot even begin to explain to you the nuances of said joke, but nary an April 1st passes by without one or the other of us referencing a dead horse.

This hilarity is at the edge of my limit when it comes to April Fool’s. I hate jokes that come at other people’s expense, and so I very much dislike pranks, which often feel mean-spirited and unkind. Also, they can backfire. I felt vindicated in my general loathing of pranks when a friend told me about removing the filling from Oreo cookies and replacing it with toothpaste, thinking her kids would immediately spit out the concoction and laugh at her antics. Instead, the kids ate all the tampered cookies. I’m no doctor, but probably we shouldn’t be consuming that much toothpaste? And I could see myself falling for this as I love the taste of mint. Anyway. April Fool’s! I find it SO dumb at best, and potentially hazardous at worst.

Up On Cripple Creek. I was telling an elderly couple about my leash mishap and fall, and the gentleman asked which side I fell on. I assumed he was talking about what side of my body, but he meant what side of the pathway; i.e., the creek side or the non-creek side. I fell on the non-creek side.

After he asked that, I started to have some weird post-mildly-traumatic stress thinking. I could really visualize an alternate scenario in which I was on the creek side of the path, and ended up tumbling down the very steep bank into the icy cold water, breaking bones and drowning my phone. Like, I could really SEE it, and now I can’t unsee it, and I am guiding Rex to the opposite side of the path at all times because WHAT IF. And THEN I started seeing a scenario in which I was being watched and filmed, because of course people are interested in the fascinating and action-packed way Rex and I plod along every morning, and the video of me flying through the air and landing in the creek, hitting everything possible on the way down, becomes a viral sensation and I turn into Pete from Mad Men.

Feeling All Right. Other than this weird mental imagery, I seem to have recovered from my fall. In other words, my sitz bone is no longer bruised and painful. Happily, my plantar fasciitis seems to be abating as well, after three weeks of intense foot stretching, ball rolling, and icing, along with a steady rotating diet of Advil and Tylenol. It probably would have gotten better quickly if I stayed off it entirely, but we all know that’s not going to happen. I cannot even imagine the mental state I would be in without my daily constitutional, not to mention Rex.

Rex does have a bed – several beds, in fact – but when I am reading on the couch he wedges himself between it and the coffee table. I was marvelling to the guys about how calm and mellow Rex is, and they looked at me like I had just eaten a shoe. After a brief silence, they all started to talk at once about how Rex is NOT a calm and mellow dog, and that I only think that because we walk 5-7 km daily prior to 9 am. I suppose this is correct. Again I started imagining alternate scenarios in which I shatter bones by falling into the creek and Rex DOESN’T get his daily walk and omg you guys, I must stop thinking of this alternate universe.

Boogie Shoes. Part of my plantar fasciitis recovery process has been wearing sandals in the house, as opposed to my usual bare or sock feet. I think it’s really helpful and also, I cannot help but feel like the guy wearing crocs and socks.

At least I’m not leaving the house like this.

Rich Girl. My friend Hannah (HI HANNAH) sent me this:

Because I am a woman of great privilege, I texted her this photo from Superstore.

LOOK WHO WON THE LOTTERY Hannah replied, because I am a Fancy Rich Lady who buys Mini-Eggs and who will be making them into little nests today.

Also, I cannot think of the word “nest” without thinking about the couple’s therapy scene in Old School, where Frank talks about panties and then, when his wife makes a noise of disgust, says “I thought…I thought we were in the Trust Tree, are we not? In the nest?”

I hope you all have a lovely weekend, and that you can splash out on Mini-Eggs or similarly ridiculously priced Easter treats. xo

Nicole’s Favourite Things: The Brain Health Edition

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After reading a few books that featured dementia last week, it occurred me to talk about my Favourite Things to improve brain health. I mean, who can’t use tips on cognitive function these days? My friend Allison (HI ALLISON) and I were talking about perimenopausal brain fog, but Allison called it brain frog. You know when someone slips up a word, but that word ends up feeling exactly right? That was this. It will be brain frog for me now and forever.

Somewhat related: at least twenty-five years ago, I messaged one of my colleagues to see if she wanted to go for a walk at lunch. She replied “I can’t, I’m swampled” and to this day that typo is part of my daily lexicon. I’m swampled when I’m feeling overbusy. And also when I have brain frog!

Nicole’s Favourite Things: The Brain Health Edition

Work That Brain Muscle

I know. I know. Everyone has been doing the Wordle for years now, and for years I have had zero interest in it or in any of the other NYT games. Then my older son was over for dinner, and he was telling me about Connections. I said that it sounded interesting, but I didn’t need another thing to be obsessed with. But Mom! he said. That’s the great thing! You can only do one a day, and then you move on with your life.

Well.

That was speaking my language and now I have joined People Who Do Connections. Once I finish Connections, I do the Wordle, and then I quickly play another game that same son introduced me to: a world geography map quiz. If you had asked me one month ago to point out, say, Uzbekistan or Kosovo on a map, I would be able to give you the general area, but now I can accurately zone in on those and every other country in Asia and Europe. Next up: I’m working on Africa.

Along with the Little Women puzzle, my son had also given me a Pride and Prejudice puzzle for Christmas. It contains one of my favourite lines, which I have mentioned before: I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! It makes me laugh every time I think of it, as it is ascribed to Caroline Bingley, one of literature’s most vapid characters and absolutely NOT a reader.

It’s cut off in the photograph, but the line It’s been many years since I’ve had such an exemplary vegetable is also there.

Exemplary Vegetables

The Mayo Clinic advises a vitamin-rich diet, one with lots of fruits, vegetables, and leafy greens, as a way to prevent dementia. Exemplary vegetables! Done and done! Our meals are all very vegetable-heavy around here, and a couple of the best examples are Big Fun Salad and Stir-Fry Night, both of which occur weekly.

In only a couple of months, Big Fun Salad will be Homegrown Big Fun Salad, but for now, I’m buying mixed greens.

Historically, Stir-Fry Night coincides with Night Before Groceries, to clean out the crisper in a delicious way. I typically wing it when it comes to sauces, but I very roughly follow Vegan Richa’s Teriyaki Sauce recipe on occasion.

I say very roughly because never do I follow a recipe exactly: for this one I double all the ingredients but halve the sugar, and I measure ginger and garlic with my heart. The pages are all stuck and messy, which reminds me of when I was a kid, Grandma Fern told my mother that if anything ever happened to her, Grandma would be able to cook all of our favourites, just based on the shape of my mother’s very stuck-together cookbook pages. This was a bit of a joke, since Grandma Fern was an incredible cook and we would have happily eaten anything she made. But my mom and I both have the same messy habit of cookbook-splattering.

In terms of leafy greens, every single day I have a green smoothie for breakfast, except while travelling. I use a cup of cashew milk, a couple of tablespoons of almond butter, a sprinkle of cinnamon, a frozen banana, and about six to eight cups of spinach. I feel like it’s a power move to start the day like that; it is chock-full of vitamins, fibre, iron, calcium, and protein.

Something that low-key bothers me is the demonization of carbohydrates these days. It reminds me of the Snackwell-obsessed low-fat 90s, and I think we all learned a lesson from that. Carbohydrates are very important for our brains and their processes, as well as for good sleep, so let’s not lose our minds over basmati rice. Or even carrot cake! There’s space for everything.

Working On Our Night Moves

I am a bit of a Sleep Evangelist, for good reason: sleep is good for every part of our lives, including our brains. Also, if I don’t get enough sleep, I am an emotional, bitchy zombie. I make it a priority by going to bed early and performing my nighttime routine at least an hour before bed, so I can wind down. I wash my face and apply serums, I brush and floss my teeth, I put on a cute pajama set and foot cream, and then I curl up on the couch to read calmly for a while, with my phone turned off. The result is that I average about 7 1/2 hours of sleep a night, which feels right for me.

But we are not robots, and no matter how good our intentions and sleep hygiene, there is always the possibility of a hot flash, there are upsetting news stories, there are things to be anxious about and, for reasons that no one can articulate, these things usually visit us in the middle of the night, where we lie awake staring at the blinking illuminated numbers on our 40-year-old clock radios. Sometimes these thoughts will be accompanied by a nearly-lyricless song, going on a loop through our heads. Cuz you RIDE on time, RIDE ON TIME. Etcetera.

As I said, I am a sleep evangelist, and so I will stop at nothing to get those 7 1/2 hours, including these:

Not all at once, of course, and not every day, but I have no compunction about using a little “helper” to get me to get a good night’s rest. I am not recommending this to you! I am not a medical professional by any stretch of the imagination! All I am saying that these work for me, depending on the day and the need.

Get The Funk Out

It’s officially the start of garden season, and so I have been busy weeding. This might sound like a chore, but I actually find it kind of soothing and meditative. It’s also instant gratification, even if the weeds do grow back in a matter of days. Maybe it’s like one of those sand mandalas made by Buddhist monks to show the transitory nature of life on this earth. I feel like this kind of practice has to be good for cognitive health, if only for the meditative aspect.

Walking is a moving meditation for me; often I do listen to a podcast (Double Love or The Rest Is History, NOTHING IN BETWEEN), but sometimes I just walk in silence and look around me.

Physical activity and vitamin D are linked to dementia prevention; walking checks both those boxes.

People Who Need People Are The Luckiest People

One of the most important – and most fun – keys to preventing cognitive decline and dementia is to stay socially active and to nourish relationships. This past week alone I have had ample opportunity to do this: there was a book club meeting, a night out with The Squad to a murder mystery at a local winery, and a visit from one of my dearest, longest-term friends (HI TARA) and her family. Old friends and new, life is good. Although, it must be said that as bad as I am about figuring out murder mysteries in books, I am much, much worse at figuring out murder mysteries in musical revue form. None of us guessed the killer, and I kept losing the thread of the plot and forgetting which character was who. Wait, who’s that guy? What happened to the girl with the sparkly skirt? Who’s THAT guy?

When Tara and family were over, her husband asked if we had any favourite places to go out for dinner. My husband and I just looked at each other. Nicole goes out with her girlfriends, sometimes, my husband responded, and we had to admit that Date Night Out is not a thing with us. Instead, we have weekly cocktail hour, which gives us time to just reconnect and chat without any distractions.

This past week we were able to have rose on our deck, which felt like a little burst of spring. Alcohol is NOT good for preventing cognitive decline, but we cannot be perfect, can we?

Outfit of the Month

Spring must have sprung, because look how COLOURFUL I am!

Navy! I’m wearing NAVY, just like a fancy peacock of a woman. I believe this sweater has been a part of an Outfit of the Month before, but a) I think it’s cute, and b) I am trying not to buy new clothes these days for environmental reasons. I cannot be too smug though, because I HAVE bought new clothes recently. I needed to replace some extremely worn-out and hole-riddled tees as well as my ripped medical-grade compression stockings, but those felt a bit more urgent and necessary, and less I’m bored of my clothes. I also have recently purchased a pair of slip-on house sandals, because I seem to have accidentally given myself a case of plantar fasciitis, due to some extremely ill-considered shoeless farmer’s carries. HOWEVER. This cute, very lightweight sweater deserves another place of OOTM honour, along with Silver jeans and little ankle boots. It’s a perfect spring outfit, in my mind.

I hope this last week of March is treating you well, friends! Do you have any Favourites this month? Do share. xo

Reason, Season, Lifetime

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In yoga, we try to cultivate what is known as “beginner’s mind,” which means that we want to approach our practices with openness and a sense of curiosity, letting go of expectations of what we “should” be doing, and focusing on what we are doing. In this way we can experience growth and mindfulness, without preconceived notions, judgement, or ego getting in the way. For example, just because I could do this in 2012 doesn’t mean I should be able to do it now:

My yoga practice looks much different these days, but it is still nourishing and joyful.

My friend Tara (HI TARA) sent me this Facebook memory from 2009:

No context needed, really, given that on that date I had two preschoolers and a puppy in the house, the days are long but the years are short, etcetera. This little gem explains a lot of what was going on in my house at the time, and it also made me think how incredible children’s minds are, and how their view of the world is so full of wonder and curiosity. My friend Pearl (HI PEARL) wrote about how, instead of “living every day as if it’s your last,” we should live every day as if it’s your FIRST. It reminded me of how I spent hours, literally hours every week just walking around the neighbourhood with the boys and standing there staring at different cars or trees, because they were fascinated with them. The whole world is fresh and new from a child’s point of view. There was a mechanic who lived at the end of our block; he had many cars in his yard that were in various states of disrepair, and the boys would spend HOURS peeking through the fence to look at the cars. HOURS. Occasionally there would be construction or demolition in our neighbourhood, and we could eat up an entire afternoon just watching it. There were always rocks to pick up and house decorations to notice, there were puddles to splash in and sticks to brandish, making me concerned that someone was going to lose an eye. We spent so much time doing what would appear to be nothing from the outside observer.

This was a time of my life where I was very in the moment, even if my mind occasionally wandered while the kids splashed in snowmelt. I was very present, in large part because smartphones weren’t around then, and there was nothing to do but watch the kids at play. I would like to remember it as a time of great mindfulness and presence, and I do, but truthfully I remember it as being often very lonely.

Every time my life has changed and I’ve entered a new era, I’ve been a bit nervous, worried about making new friends. The years before my children were in elementary school were lonely ones, particularly when they were babies. I did have friends, but scheduling playdates with everyone’s naptimes and preschool and the inevitable viruses that all the children had in perpetuity was difficult, and even when we did get together, conversation was constantly interrupted by said children. I went to a weekly playgroup but friendships never got past the surface level. Some of it, I think, was the inability to converse uninterrupted, but some of it was weird parenting time that we were in. Gen X women, it seemed, reacted to their own free range childhoods by becoming total weirdos when it came to parenting, especially in those early years. One had only to bring cupcakes with pink frosting to a soccer game to garner judgement and disdain. A certain kind of conversation about breast or bottle feeding could drive a wedge between two women, and bad feelings could fester forever.

Friends truly do come into your life for a reason, season, or lifetime. I have been so lucky to have found a circle of women here who are the epitome of encouraging, of lifting up other women. This weekend, they gave me a party, and I am still so warm and fuzzy from it. I mean, would you look at this cake?

My friend Sandi (HI SANDI), who was the beta reader that gave me the title Inhale Exhale, had this VEGAN cake made! Isn’t it incredible?

Can you even? Can you even believe this? It was beautiful.

In my Ask Me Anything, Anna asked how I met my wonderful new friend group, and the truth is that I was very, very fortunate (HI ANNA). I had been friends with Sam, hostess with the mostess (HI SAMMI) since 2014, and when I moved here, she threw a girls’ night to introduce me to some of her friends. Then some of those friends introduced me to their friends, and now we have a circle. We are all in a similar stage of life and we are all open to meeting and getting together and doing fun things. It’s a real gift; I was very worried that I would be lonely here, but it’s been the opposite, as you can see. (HI SQUAD).

Suzanne (HI SUZANNE) asked what is an absolute deal breaker in a friendship and I’ve been thinking about that since she asked it, months ago. I would be much more likely to reseat the theatre than to dramatically end a friendship, to be honest. I mean, if someone was a toxic mean bigot, that would be a deal-breaker, but I probably wouldn’t be friends with such a person in the first place. I have had friendships fade away, and I have been ghosted, but if someone has time for me, generally speaking I’m going to have time for them.

It’s interesting that the word “friend” is such a wide umbrella term for me. In the same way that I use “love” to describe both my feelings for my children and for Aperol spritzes, I use “friend” very liberally. Former schoolmates who I haven’t seen for decades but keep up with on Facebook, a random woman I met at a blog conference in 2013, the people I talk to briefly every morning on the walking path, all of these people I consider my friends. But on the other end of the spectrum are the lifelong friends who have seen me through every iteration, and loved me all the same, even during my Jim Morrison poetry phase. There are also the local friends, my squad, who I see regularly and miss desperately when I don’t talk to them for three days. And then there are the long distance friends who make an effort to keep in touch and who I might not see for years at a time, but when we do it’s like no time at all has passed.

Of course, there are all of you, my long-distance blog friends and readers, my pen pals. Without all of you, these words would just be floating off into the abyss, and so I’m grateful for all of you.

Weekly Reading

Just one book this week but it was a big one, clocking in at almost 500 pages.

Homeseeking. This is an epic story that follows two people over a six-decade span, from their childhood home in Shanghai to Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the US. This is the kind of book that you want to read with references – I learned so much about Chinese history, the Chinese diaspora, relations with Taiwan, and multiple languages. The author makes a very interesting stylistic choice, telling the story from both points of view but in different timelines. She also changes the names subtly to reflect the different languages being spoken (Shanghainese, Taiwainese, Mandarin, Cantonese, English). It’s a love story but it’s also a story of devastating choices and occurrences. I’m not going to spoil anything, but I did wonder what would have happened to the male character had he stayed in Shanghai; I think he would have been killed in the Cultural Revolution. I learned a lot reading this, and I’m really glad I read it.

Happy March, everyone! One of my dear new friends just turned 50 yesterday, and I’m so excited for her to enter this new decade. Thirty years ago I kind of thought 50 was the end of the line, so to speak, and even fifteen years ago I thought it would be a wrenching time of Landslide feelings. Now I realize it is a decade for reinvention and revival, and the empty – or semi-empty – nest has allowed me space to really cultivate and bring richness to my relationships, with friends and with my marriage, and also with my adult children. Spring is springing here in the Okanagan Valley, and I am feeling the renewal. I plan to spend this month, and hopefully all to come, with the goal of viewing the world with a beginner’s mind, with curiosity and awareness. The buds on the trees are swelling, the perennials are greening, the grey and clouds of winter have lifted, and I spent time yesterday weeding. It’s happening! I hope you all have a beautiful, lamb-like first week of March. xo

People Are Strange, When You’re A Stranger

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You know, Mom, you might want to consider switching up your routine, my older son said to me. That way, if someone doesn’t see you for a few days, they won’t think Rex died.

It’s not like I walk the exact same route at the exact same time every single day, but I do often enough that in the days following my return from Morocco, I was stopped no less than fifteen times while walking Rex to be told that my presence on the greenway was much missed. Some, but certainly not all, were people I know by sight and talk to regularly. One older couple said, frantically, Where WERE you, we were so WORRIED that something happened! They looked with wide-eyed significance at Rex, who was engaged in the serious business of Sniffing A Tree.

Well, it’s nice to be noticed, although as my sister-in-law’s boyfriend says Big black dog, big red hair, you’re hard to miss. In any case, it’s nice to be home, and the fall colours have been incredible.

People are very interesting and we never really know what’s going on in someone’s life, although we might think we do. We were the first zone to be called for boarding on our flight from Paris to Casablanca, but as soon as we all finished going through the check zone, we were stopped. All of us in zone 1 stood in the walkway for over thirty minutes, and although there was an announcement about it, I didn’t really understand. It was something to do with customs, which made a lot of sense after we finally boarded the plane. I settled in with my Kobo when I heard incessant screaming and yelling.

I don’t know about you, but an adult shrieking is not something I want to hear when I’m on a plane. I tried to see what was happening, and then thought maybe craning around in my seat wasn’t a smart idea, so I quietly shrank a little. What was happening, which the man next to my husband informed us, was that a person was being deported back to Morocco and that there was a large police presence on the back of the plane. The flight was delayed over an hour before the man was taken off the plane, still screaming. My husband’s seatmate, who is a Moroccan national but works in Algeria, necessitating long flights through Paris to get home, said that there is such an occurrence on almost every single such flight, which made me unbelievably sad on multiple levels.

Because of this, we were delayed getting into Casablanca, but it was nothing compared with the six Australians in our group who were delayed by DAYS and who just barely made it before our tour left the city. They were delayed in Rwanda, then stuck in Dubai, before finally making it to Morocco, and somehow 5 pieces of luggage made it there as well. The sixth, belonging to our new friend Greg, arrived five days later and the reunion was cause for much celebration in our group. He would track it daily with his Air Tags, letting us know that now, somehow, it’s in South Africa, and the like. This is why I never check luggage. I was incredibly stressed on Greg’s behalf, and I only just met him.

In any case, I was very happy to have the Australians join our group, which up to that moment consisted of another Australian, a couple from Ottawa who had defected from Romania in 1985 and who were absolutely fascinating, and a woman from New Zealand. The seven Australians and two Canadians were pure delight, but the woman from New Zealand was, to put it mildly, not.

As an example, Ms NZ made all eleven of us, plus two guides and a driver, wait for fifty minutes on the bus, and then, when she finally boarded, she did not apologize for being so late. This was at nearly six pm, after we had been on a walking tour since nine in the morning, and all we wanted to do was shower and eat. Not eighteen hours later, we were stopped by the police because she wasn’t wearing her seatbelt, which led to a prolonged, agonizingly heated discussion between our guide, the driver, and three armed policemen. I didn’t know we needed to wear seatbelts, Ms NZ said defensively, again not apologizing.

All of that could have been forgiven – we all make mistakes, although apologizing is a thing that people do in society – if she did not constantly complain. By the time the Australians joined us, I was already wondering how I could bear two weeks with this woman. She complained endlessly about our hotel: the elevator didn’t stop at her floor (it stopped at ours), the hair dryer didn’t work (it worked in our room), and the tea kettle needed a plug converter (we take a converter with us). I tried to feel compassion about these annoying little blips, but then she yelled at the desk staff that she wanted a cup of tea and she wanted it NOW, and if there is one thing I cannot abide, it is a person who is rude to service staff. After breakfast the next day she complained that no one brought her coffee, and since I had only known this woman for twelve hours at that point, I thought I was being helpful by pointing out that it was buffet-style, and one only needed to ask the man at the counter to prepare a cup of wonderful coffee. Maybe she didn’t know how it worked, I thought. All one needed to do was ask, and delicious coffee appeared. Why should I have to ask? she said to me. He’s walking around, he could just do his job.

Well. How does one respond to that, except to say You’re a cunt, which I did NOT do. Do we go into Starbucks and sit at a table, waiting for someone to bring us a Tazo chai with coconut milk? NO WE DO NOT. She also complained incessantly about garbage by the side of the road, including when we were on a walking tour in a village with a guide who lived in that village. People live here! Those people might not understand the words, but they definitely understand what you’re saying, and what you’re saying is RUDE and implies that they are living in a trash heap.

It got to the point where I wondered if our guide was starting to hate the sound of his own name, since Ms NZ would shrilly call it out every five minutes to ask another of her inane questions while the rest of us had twitching eyebrows. What are those trees, why are they all trimmed that way, who decided that it was the best way, why is it the best way to trim the trees…ad infinitum.

And I realize that had I not been, as they say, a donkey on the edge, I would have happily tuned all of this out. I would have cheerfully half-listened to our guide patiently talk about branch pruning in Morocco, but as it was, I wanted to murder her. Thank god for the Australians and the Romanian-Canadians! And was I sorry that she not only contracted the Traveller’s Tummy but also some kind of virus that caused her to sleep – on the bus, in a restaurant, in the accommodations – for almost forty-eight hours? No, I was not. I am a firm believer in karma, and we were all happy to have some blessed silence.

Weekly Reading

I have SO many books to tell you about, that I read while on buses and planes, but I think I will keep those for a separate post. For now, this is what I read this week – and wow, it was a good week!

Songs at the River’s Edge. I had such a craving to reread this book about a British social anthropologist who lives for eighteen months in a rural village in Bangladesh, circa 1987. It was a twenty-year journey for me to get this book at all, and the details of that are here. She details how she is accepted into the family and describes all the various customs, relationships, and social hierarchy within. There is relative prosperity and desperate poverty, and the stories are moving and beautiful, about the power of community and family, as well as the dire straits of the people who try to move away in search of a better life. The stories about women and their marital fate are fascinating and often very sad. 

Motherness. I have known Julie Green, the author of Motherness, for over a decade; we used to work together at YMC. Truly, I didn’t know her well; her beat was “Buzz,” and she wrote several newsy and current events-related articles a day, while I wrote one recipe post a week. She lived in Toronto and I in Calgary, and once or twice a year I would fly out to see the whole team. I remember those parties very fondly, but I didn’t talk much to Julie. She was pretty quiet and, I assumed, shy. What I didn’t realize – and what she didn’t realize, either – is that she is autistic, and these parties, she writes, were a source of terror and anxiety for her, causing her many sleepless nights and to hide in the bathroom for most of the time. I had no idea. And this is the important part of this memoir, the idea of “masking” that autists do, particularly women. They get along to get along, so to speak, and the stress of the masking, Julie says, “comes at a cost to mental health and can lead to low self-esteem, stress, exhaustion, anxiety, depression, and even suicidality.” She goes on to say that autistic women are often misdiagnosed with depression, anxiety, and mood disorders, which makes me wonder how many women are walking around without appropriate help. Probably many. She is the mother of an autistic child, and she writes openly about the struggles and joys and the agony of trying to fit your child into a world that doesn’t fit them. It’s raw and vulnerable and very moving. Highly recommend this incredible memoir. 

October has been such a strange month for me, what with travel and then birthday celebrations and then coming back to earth! I can hardly believe it’s the last week. I hope you are all, like Humpty Dumpty, having a great fall. xo

Nicole’s Favourite Things: The Fall Follies Edition

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I was at the dog park last week, walking in my usual loop, when I passed by a man I see quite frequently. He’s probably in his 70s, and he has two dogs, one of them a very young puppy. This is against the rules – dogs less than four months are not permitted in the dog park – but I am not The Dog Park Rule Enforcer, so I usually just nod and smile. I was doing that, when he said Have you ever heard of grounding? I had my earbuds in, and wasn’t sure if I heard him correctly, so I politely paused my podcast, raised my eyebrows and tilted my head.

It’s when you stand on the ground with bare feet, facing the sun, he said, and of course I DO know that, but it was such an unexpected question from such an unexpected source. Oh yes, I have heard of th…I started to say as I looked down to see that he was indeed standing with his face to the sun, shoeless. Bare feet. In the dog park.

I blinked behind my sunglasses and then said You’re very brave to do that in the dog park! Brave? Or crazy? At that very moment, his puppy ran up to me to show me the sandal he had in his mouth, and then ran off again as the man admonished him to return it.

I kept walking.

By the time I left the park, ten minutes later, the man was still chasing the puppy, wearing only one sandal. Then I heard him call to someone that the puppy had left his sandal in the long grass and he couldn’t find it.

I hope he was able to disinfect his foot when he got home. Either that or amputate it.

I’m not saying that was one of my Favourite Things, it’s more of a PSA. If you want to ground, maybe don’t do it in a dog park.

Nicole’s Favourite Things: The Fall Follies Edition

Grapes of Wrath

Almost all of the grapes on the vineyard behind our house are for wine, but the four rows directly behind our house – which we own – are concords. Once those grapes ripen, the air smells like grape juice, and I cannot even begin to express how wonderful it is to walk outside and be hit by that delicious scent.

This past month, until the grapes were all harvested, I would just walk outside and pick a bunch to snack on. Just before the harvest, I snipped off three bowlfuls to enjoy for a little longer. I don’t think I will ever not love the ability to have such fresh fruit right outside my door!

A Pear Affair

Speaking of fresh fruit, the pear crop has been incredible this year as well. My son requested a pear cake for his birthday, and I was happy to oblige.

I used my friend Julie’s (HI JULIE) recipe, and I will note here that I cut the sugar in half, and it was plenty sweet that way. I followed the recipe exactly for the penuche frosting, and it made at least three times as much frosting as one could possibly pile onto the cake.

I have made this recipe before, but I hadn’t noted this down at all, so I don’t know WHAT happened. I do know that I ended up throwing out a lot of frosting, because what else could be done? I suppose I could have frozen it for later use a) when was that going to be, b) chances are I would forget it was there and then later have to chisel frozen penuche out of a container, and c) OMG IT WAS SO MUCH FROSTING. Anyway, the cake was delicious, but I have noted: cut sugar in half, make 1/3 the amount of frosting.

These Shoes Are Made For Walking

Back in my running days, I was very choosy about my footwear, and would spend quite a bit of money buying the fancy Asics Gel-what-have-you shoes. But when I stopped running, I started to buy less expensive shoes – the Skecher Go Walks. I don’t know why I thought I didn’t deserve expensive footwear anymore, particularly since I walk a minimum of five kilometres a day, often more, but that’s what happened. Even without all that walking, I STILL DESERVE DECENT FOOTWEAR.

A few weeks ago, my left foot started hurting, a lot. No problem! I had bought a pair of Skechers on sale and was just waiting for my other pair to wear out before taking them out of the box. I donned my new shoes, went for a walk, and was in pain by the end of it. Worse, the pain started in my heel, and ominous music started playing in my head. I know what heel pain means: planter fasciitis.

No! My feet are my fortune! Or, at least a very important part of me. I fretted and fretted, rolling my foot on yoga balls and massaging it and generally feeling kind of stressed about it. Not only am I on my feet for hours every day, we are going on a vacation that requires a GREAT DEAL OF WALKING very soon! I can’t not be able to walk!

My husband not-so-gently suggested I was being cheap and immediately found me a pair of Asics trail runners, appropriate for the gravelly and sometimes rocky trails that Rex and I favour.

Foot pain – gone. Let this be a lesson for us all: cheap footwear is just not worth it. And this is also a lesson in why I didn’t do another no-shopping challenge! Sometimes needs must.

Progress Not Perfection

I read an interview in Cup of Jo, and as I was looking at the photos, I thought damn, that woman has great hair. Wouldn’t you know it, she happened to mention the hair product she uses: Living Proof’s Perfect Hair Day 5-in-1 Treatment.

I ordered some, thinking it would be a good item for travel, cutting down on the many products I usually use. And friends, it worked like a dream. A DREAM!

Not only that, but my hair still felt great the next day – without washing or adding more product.

Jane, Meet The Dollhouse

I have mentioned my friend Michelle’s incredible and uplifting blog before (HI MICHELLE), and in particular I have mentioned her absolutely delightful dollhouse. Every single post is more wonderful than the last – it just gets better and better. Well, I don’t know how she is going to top this one, because she obtained a Jane Austen doll. Jane Austen! With the gnomes in the dollhouse! I am surprised I didn’t spin right off this planet.

I’m not going to steal any photos from her, obviously – you’ll just have to go to look for yourself! But in honour of her, I wore (one of) my Jane Austen tees, which is also a Favourite Thing.

Outfit of the Month

This exact outfit has been an OOTM before, but since I am shopping my closet these days – with the exception of this month’s shoes! – I thought it deserved to shine.

Yesterday my husband and I were invited to a tour and tasting at a very fancy, architecturally incredible winery, and this was the perfect choice. Sorel boots for walking and standing, tights because wineries can be really cold, and my favourite lululemon t-shirt dress. Perfectly comfortable and cute!

And now, as alluded to, I am off on an adventure! I will be taking a blog break and will see you all on the other side. Take care of yourselves, friends. xo

Bounty and the Bust

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Who Loves You?

I was listening to an interview with Anne Lamott, who is a writer and person that I very much admire. She was talking about the concept of self-care, and how her entire life these days is based on self-care, which felt quite resonant to me. Recently someone asked me what I do with all my time, now that I’m neither teaching yoga nor raising children, and I was quite puzzled. I fill it? It seems like my days are all full and busy and very little of my time feels wasted. But I think the better answer is one like Lamott’s, in that my whole life feels like one giant self-care project at this stage in my journey towards the grave.

Lamott spoke of everything she does as a radical act of love towards herself, stating that if she so much as makes herself a cup of peppermint tea or eats a cookie she thinks Someone is taking care of me and loving me, that “someone” being her own self. I’m going to start thinking this way. Someone loves me so much that they made me this hummus, I’ll think at lunch, eating my own homemade hummus. Someone is taking care of me by making me sit on the deck and read for an hour, I’ll think. After all, one cannot be a writer without being a reader, and so it’s career development as well as self-care.

Is It A Robot?

I have a real aversion to AI and Chat GPT and other things that are destructive to our environment and also to our collective intelligence. I realize – YES I REALIZE – that there are benefits to the medical community and research, sure. But also? It is making us collectively stupider. I am sure you can, for example, develop a travel itinerary using AI, but you know what else you can do? Google. It’s already supremely easy to access information about literally everything in the world, I do not think we need to make our brains lazier, particularly given the environmental damage AI wreaks. Do not even get me started on AI-created pictures or writing.

This aversion did not, however, stop me from listening to a podcast about Chat GPT romances. Did you know this was a thing? I certainly did not. There are a lot of lonely people out there who are embarking on romantic, and even sexual, relations with a chat bot. And if you, like me, were thinking how do you have sex with a chat bot, then you are not thinking outside the box enough. It would be similar to phone sex, let’s put it like that.

So this is a thing now. I listened to an interview with a man who, apparently, has a REAL LIFE GIRLFRIEND but also a chat bot one, and the reason for the latter is that – wait for it – his girlfriend doesn’t understand him. To quote Miss Cornelia, ISN’T THAT JUST LIKE A MAN? This “relationship” started when his actual human girlfriend was uninterested in watching the lunar eclipse with him, and so he now goes to his chat bot girlfriend for all his astronomy conversation-based needs.

If you’re thinking woof, that is fucked up, then you are in the exact same mental space as I was, until I started giving it a bit more thought. It’s not much different from chat rooms of two decades ago, or even those 1-800 numbers to talk to “singles in your area,” but the difference is that there is not a human on the other end of it. Which brings me to my question: which is worse, finding out your spouse is cheating on you with a robot, or finding out your spouse is cheating on you with a random stranger in a chat room? Or paying for phone sex? Or – and I actually think this is the worst of all – having an online affair with someone on social media?

Bounty and Bust

A vastly better use for our planet’s water is for food production, I think we all can agree. Which brings me to a long-overdue garden update!

This was my harvest last weekend, before I started shutting the garden down. It’s a little early for it, but we are going on vacation soon and I’d rather get things done in the beautiful September sunshine than later, when it might not be so lovely. The tomatoes and raspberries are, improbably enough, still going strong. I have enough squash and zucchini (omg, so much zucchini), to last me all year, and I have more onions and jalapenos than I can possibly use, so I have been sharing them with the winery staff.

Not everything has been so bountiful, though. I have six gorgeous bell pepper plants that have, through the summer, been absolutely covered with beautiful, perfect peppers. Despite this, I have harvested only seven peppers in total, because every time one starts to ripen and change colour, I go to inspect it only to find that it has been nibbled on. Worse, sometimes the peppers look amazing and then disintegrate when I pick them up, because water has gotten in through the nibbles and rotted the pepper from the inside out.

The only possible explanation is that it is a squirrel, and indeed, I have seen those little bastards zipping around the garden boxes. We have a tall deer fence, and there isn’t anything else that could be getting in. Squirrels! They have been my gardening nemesis since my Calgary days, when those assholes would merrily dig up all my plants for no good reason or chew all the wires on our outdoor Christmas decorations. One year, squirrels ate the entire hat off of a light-up wire snowman, and another year they dug up and ate all 150 fall bulbs that I had painstakingly planted. As we all know, the Eastern Grey Squirrel is not even native to Calgary, and I will tell you that once Barkley caught one and tried to kill it and I did not feel bad about it. Me! Animal loving me! I was like FUCK THAT SQUIRREL, GO BARKLEY.

Anyway, next year I shall sprinkle cayenne in my pepper beds to keep the (actually native) squirrels out. If that doesn’t work, I give up. I will just buy from the farm market.

The other bust was my fall planting of spinach and kale. I enthusiastically planted seeds in mid-August, like I did last year, and then we had warmer than normal temperatures. The heat stunted the germination process and now, a month later, I have only the smallest scatterings of seedlings. I suppose I could try again now, but as I said we are leaving for vacation soon and it feels like it will be a wasted effort.

Weekly Reading

Not a wasted effort? This week’s reading. One of these things is not like the others!

I Who Have Never Known Men. Rex’s face says it all. I read a dystopian novel and I liked it. I think it was because it is an entirely character-based novel that takes place entirely in the narrator’s head, the narrator who is not only unnamed to us, but unnamed at all. She is known as “the child,” as she was taken as a child to the underground bunker with thirty-nine women. One day a siren goes off and the guards disappear immediately. The women escape to discover they are all alone in the world, whatever world they are in. This book asks such interesting questions: what happens to a person brought up in isolation from the rest of the world, how does a person make sense of the world, what is the nature of hope and when is hope lost?

Bad Summer People. Do you love juicy, gossipy, scandalous stories about rich people behaving badly? Me too! This was so much fun to read; we start with the discovery of a dead body and then the story backtracks from there. There are multiple (read: SO MANY) points of view and characters, and I was here for every single one of them. What a ride! Also, I love the kind of intensity that something like a low-talent tennis tournament can bring about, that’s all I’m saying.

The Identicals. I recently started listening to Elin Hildebrand’s podcast Books, Beach, and Beyond, in which she – given her own star power – interviews absolute literary stars and talks to them about their writing process. Recently she mentioned that her books follow a formula and she does not deviate from this formula, and I have to say, when you’re right, you’re right. There is something SO lovely about reading a book which you KNOW will end happily, and as you read it, you can see those happy things taking shape. This is a book about estranged identical twins living on Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard, and they basically trade places for the summer. Capers ensue, everything turns out perfectly, I loved it, the end. A perfectly lovely beach read that I read with the actual beach in view.

Today is the first day of fall! It’s fall, fuckfaces! And so it is the start of Decorative Gourd Season, Motherfuckers, and also – in Canada only! – Decorative Gord Season.

I mean, that will never get old. You’re either ready to reap this freaky-assed harvest or you’re not. Let’s go! xo