Category Archives: Okanagan Life

The Bear Necessities

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There are so many ways in which Younger Nicole would not recognize Current Nicole, and one of those ways has to do with animal care; specifically, I am now a person who brushes her dog’s teeth. Fourteen years with Barkley and it would have never occurred to me to have a tiny toothbrush and a tube of beef-flavoured paste; I just gave him a Greenie and called it a day. About six months ago, the vet told me that Rex had a fairly significant case of gingivitis and plaque buildup, particularly for a dog who was only TWO, and it seemed my Greenie routine was just not cutting it anymore. And so, every day in the late afternoon I brush his teeth using encouraging words like look at you, you’re so good, yay, and then I send him outside with a special dental treat to chew on. It’s pretty much the only time during the day he’s not within six feet of me for more than five minutes. He’s known as Mom’s Bodyguard for a reason, people, and that reason is that he doesn’t want me out of his sight for a moment, whether that be to shower or to refill a glass.

Last week he was out with his dental treat and I suddenly heard barking, which was very unusual, and the bark itself was very strange. I went on the deck to see what was up and lo and behold, not a hundred feet from me and just beside my mother-in-law’s yard was a huge black bear.

Well! That will get the heart pumping. I got Rex inside the house, and phoned my mother-in-law, who didn’t answer her cell or her landline. Finally when I saw the bear was gone I sent my son over to tell her the news. It turns out that she had been moving the sprinkler on her lawn, not fifty feet from the bear, but out of my sightline, completely unaware of the furry existence. I found the whole thing a bit stressful but after some REM Y REM, I came to the following conclusions: a) bear sightings are commonplace in this area, and will only be more so due to the fires, b) with all these sightings there have been exactly zero bear attacks on people or dogs over the years, and c) at this time of year bears are really only interested in maintaining and increasing their zaftig figures, so the likelihood of a bear turning away from the grapes to maul my dog is near zero, if not actually zero. We may have to revise c) in the spring, but let’s live in the present. Also, Rex was smart enough to stay near the house, rather than bounding over to see if there was a new friend who came to visit, which has been my worry since last fall, when my mother-in-law continuously sent a slew of texts with bear photos from the neighbourhood. Am I going to be living in the actual wilderness? I would think to myself, looking out the window to see Rex wandering through the fenced yard in my suburban oasis.

I have two very vivid, fearful memories from my early childhood, and the first is looking at a motion lamp my grandparents had that depicted a forest fire, like this one. I oscillated between fascination and fear, looking at that lamp, which I think we can all agree is a little bit weird. Home decor that showcases the devastation of a forest fire? I mean, it’s yet another reason I won’t watch Bambi. When I was in the first grade, there was a visit from firefighters who told us all about fire safety, and one, probably well-meaning but misguided firefighter casually mentioned that we all needed to have a exit plan in case of fire, since every single person will be involved in a fire in their lifetime. EVERY ONE OF US. Pro-tip: never tell a child something like this, particularly one with a vivid imagination. I spent many nights lying awake, planning the fire escape route from our bungalow, wondering when, exactly, I would need to put this plan in place. In my six-year-old mind, this fire safety visit meant that we were all going to die in a fiery inferno, perhaps soon, and thus began my lifelong fear of fire. With the exception of birthday candles, I will not light a candle in my house, so help me god. A few of the yoga studios I taught at had little tea lights burning all the time, and I would immediately extinguish them before starting class, so worried was I that someone would catch fire during a vinyasa. This fear wasn’t completely unfounded as once a woman came in to the lobby and the fringes of her scarf grazed a candle as she nonchalantly removed her boots, eliciting a very non-zen shriek from me, behind the desk, as I pummeled her scarf on the table.

The second fearful memory is very fuzzy, literally and figuratively, and has to do with a movie that must have been on television playing in the background while I dressed up my paper dolls, wondering if I could pair those heels with this skirt, or if flats would be better. This movie, which I have since deduced must have been the 1976 film Grizzly, featured a rampaging, human-eating grizzly bear. I would never have watched an entire non-Muppet-or-animated film as a child, but I clearly recall viewing a scene in which a woman and child were hiding in a cabin, ostensibly believing themselves safe from becoming dinner, when a bear claw slid underneath the cabin door. I’m sure it ended in their deaths, but at that point I stopped watching and just started screaming hysterically, probably to my long-suffering mother’s exhausted chagrin. Wasn’t she just playing with her paper dolls a second ago? That scene is so indelible in my mind that when I saw it again while babysitting years later, again on a background television, I gasped out loud and went to check on my tiny sleeping charge, just in case a grizzly slid its claw under the door to break it down, without my knowledge.

The rational, lived-the-vast-majority-of-my-life-outside-the-Rockies me knows there is a big difference between black bears and grizzlies, particularly Jaws, But Make It Bears, fictional kind of grizzlies. Chances are that our visitor is more Baloo than Murder Bear or Governor General Award-Winning Soft Porn Bear, but still.

As an aside: once again, what was happening in the Canadian literature world in 1976?

Anyway. Isn’t it funny that within only six weeks in my new environment, I have faced not one but two of my greatest childhood fears? If, as the lululemon shopping bag says, we should do one thing every day that scares us, I guess I am living my best life just existing here. What’s next? Is someone going to force feed me celery with peanut butter and raisins? I hope not. If anyone is going to eat Ants on a Log, it had better be our Baloo, and involve actual ants on an actual log.

Weekly Reading

An Unquiet Mind. This is a memoir of a woman who has her PhD in psychiatry…and suffers deeply from psychiatric illness. She is what is now known as bipolar disorder but she refers to as manic depressive illness (this was written in 1995). In fact, there is a whole section where she argues against the term bipolar. Anyway, she describes her psychotic breaks, her experience with lithium, and the ethics of treating psychiatric patients when one has a very serious, potentially debilitating mental illness. Some parts are fascinating, others really dragged for me, but mostly I thought it was an educational look into a first-person account of such an illness.

Let’s Explore Diabetes With Owls. I posed this question on Instagram to my fellow Sedaris fans: after reading Happy Go Lucky, do you find your rereading of his old essays to be…disturbing? What I mean is, any essay that mentions his father, I see it through a completely different lens, and believe me, even before Happy Go Lucky I found it weird that his father would walk around pants-less constantly, and comment on his daughter’s appearances. Anyway, I thought I’d reread this collection and I enjoyed it significantly less than before, and not just because it contains a few fictional essays, which I tend to dislike due to their over-the-top mean-spiritedness. A friend who had gone to one of his readings responded to my question, and said that you could see his mean-spiritedness come out in his interactions with his fans and with book signings, mental note, never go to a Sedaris book signing. Don’t get me wrong, the essays that hit really hit, and I did find myself laughing out loud at times. It was just less than before and had me wondering if I would feel this way about all his essays.

Calypso. I had to try it. I had to see if I would have the same reaction and I did not. I still love this collection, and the parts about his family – specifically his father and his sister Tiffany, who died by suicide – are moving and nuanced and thoughtful. This has always been my favourite collection and I’m glad it held up for me.

Same Time Next Summer. I really loved this author’s first book, so I was really disappointed with this one. I guess it’s the premise that I really disliked: woman goes back to her childhood summer home with her fiance, runs into “the one that got away,” The One being the guy she dated in high school. Maybe it’s because I just cannot relate; all of the relationships of my youth blew up so spectacularly that I could never fathom ever speaking to any of them again, let alone rekindling lost love. So I didn’t love the storyline and I didn’t love the weird little twists, and I especially didn’t like the fiance painted as the Stiff Wrong Guy who had Serious Opinions on things like wedding invitations and what kind of cake to serve. Show me a guy who has a real vision of what colour of napkins should be used at a wedding reception and I’ll show you a wedding planner. Anyway, your mileage may vary but I thought this was a very silly and trite romance, albeit a quick and easy read.

It’s been a very exciting week at the Boyhouse: my younger son started a full-time job last Monday, my husband came home from two weeks away, and my older son moved into residence at university. All wonderful things, and I’m looking forward to a busy week ahead. But first: enjoying a beautiful Labour Day! I hope you all are having a lovely long weekend. xo

Nicole’s Favourite Things: The New House Edition

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First of all, thank you to everyone who has reached out to me about the fires. It means so much to have so many people thinking of me and my family. We are all safe and the situation has improved vastly. Tuesday morning I was walking Rex and I realized that I could smell air, not smoke, and I could see little faint patches of sky, and then Tuesday night it rained. Wednesday morning was beautiful and clear, and I was just so grateful.

It reminded me of when I injured my hip in 2019; after months of limping I swore I would never again take for granted the ability to move without pain, and I haven’t, and I feel like I will never take for granted the ability to step outside my house and take a deep, non-smoky breath. I am no stranger to smoky skies, but this was beyond anything I had experienced. When I washed my hair, the rinse water was a brownish tobacco colour, which was pretty gross. So I am ever grateful to all my friends, sending good thoughts my way and to the people in Kelowna.

Speaking of friends, one of my perennially favourite things is our blogging community. It’s such a supportive group of women who uplift other women, and on that note, Elisabeth (HI ELISABETH) had me guest post over on her blog. It was so fun answering all her questions, so please do go check it out.

And speaking of favourite things, it’s that time again! I thought it only appropriate to talk about our new house. You guys, it’s beautiful. It’s such a beautiful house. It was designed to our specifications; my husband worked really hard on all the details, and he got it all very right. I don’t think there is one thing that I would change, and there are so many things I love about it.

Nicole’s Favourite Things: The New House Edition

Welcome To My Kitchen

Were you ever – or maybe are you now – obsessed with Laura Ingalls Wilder? I sure was, and as an aside, for those of you who love podcasts, may I suggest Wilder? Hard core Laura enthusiasts who have read Prairie Fires and Pioneer Girl won’t find much new, exactly, but it is a fascinating look at the real life of Laura, and it my reassures me that I’m not alone in my longtime feelings about Pa and his apparent mental instability, constantly putting his family at risk, illegally squatting in land that did not belong to him, and making bad decision after bad decision. Anyway, if you were also a Little House fan – the books, not the TV show – you might remember when Laura got married, Almanzo built her a kitchen with lots of drawers and shelves, saying that a fellow is a fool if he can’t keep his wife happy with ample storage space. Old timey sexism aside, I can appreciate this thought and I had it many times during the house build. My kitchen is a dream with So Many Drawers. It was modelled after my mother’s kitchen, with a narrow drawer for spices, a drawer for cookie sheets, and a hidden garbage and recycle drawer. I love it so much.

In addition to this gorgeous kitchen, I have a pantry! I have a pantry!

Across from the pantry are even more built-in storage cupboards, which hold liquor, kitchen linens, cleaning supplies, brooms and mops, and our many, many shoes and boots.

I am 100% sure my husband never read These Happy Golden Years, but he really Almanzo-ed it up with the storage situation.

Let There Be Light

Every room in the house has enormous windows, and I love all the natural light. We have a gorgeous view of the city, lake, and mountains beyond, and each window feels like it showcases a work of art. I especially love my early morning yoga practice, being able to see the sky lighten as I move through my asana.

I Want To Dress You Up In My Love

There is even a window in our walk-in closet, and YES! I have a walk-in closet!

I also have MORE built-in shelves for my clothes; after twenty-three years of cramming all my clothes into half a closet and a dresser, I am really enjoying having so much room, especially since I found my non-mouse-eaten bag of favourite sweaters.

Hello Mudder

While we are on the topic of clothes and shoes, I also have a mudroom that more than one person can be in at a time! There is space for shoes and coats and accessories, and I am here for it.

There is also a cozy reading chair that I like to curl up in, looking out the big windows at the world going by, such as it is, or at least at our neighbour’s barn.

The Laundry Never Ends, So Let’s Make It Nice

My friend Janet (HI JANET) was touring our house and said “You know you’ve arrived when you have a whole room for the laundry.” WORD. I have arrived! I love my new laundry room so much, and there are more built-in cupboards for all the linens, extra blankets, towels, and so forth.

Let’s Kiss and Makeup

One of the most exciting things about this house is that we have three bathrooms, and one of them is an ensuite, which I have never had before. It’s gorgeous with a big shower and, again, lots of space and light.

Best of all, I have my very own MAKEUP TABLE!

So you can see why I am in love with this house! Storage! Bathrooms! A dream kitchen! Light! NO ONE’S SHOES JUMBLED UP IN PILES ON THE FLOOR IN THE ENTRY WAY!

Outfit of the Month

The majority of August has been very hot, which makes getting dressed a breeze. Mostly I’m a skort-and-tank top girl, but we’ve had a few occasions where I wanted to be dressier, like on our first dinner party. But barefoot dressy, if you know what I mean. This is another Old Navy dress that I bought in 2017, so I do not feel guilty for fast fashion because I’ve had it for six years, and I will probably keep it for at least that long, to my husband’s great dismay. He thinks I should update more frequently, but I do, which is why I needed all that storage space. It’s not a “one in, one out” situation in the Boyhouse, let me tell you. Anyway, I tend to prefer shorter dresses but I love the length for entertaining; I can bend over to grab things or sit with my feet tucked up without traumatizing my guests.

Lots of things to love this month, and of course, many more Favourite Things to come about my New Life! What did you love this August? Tell me everything. xo

Playing The Fiddle

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Weekly Reading

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

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

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

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

Five For Friday: The Faces, Friends, Fire, and Family Edition

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  • Nobody Panic. It was so fun to read everyone’s responses to the dishwashing, face washing, cookbook post. The very next day, the Nobody Panic podcast released an episode called How To Wash Your Face, which made me wonder – do they read this blog? No. But it was a fun coincidence anyway. Not to completely spoil the episode, but the theme was “Should you do this too? I don’t know, I don’t know your face! We all have different faces!” which is just how I feel! All our different precious faces require different methods of washing!
  • Girls, Girls, Girls. Last Saturday my sweet friend Sammi (HI SAMMI) hosted a girl’s night, and she included both me and another woman who had also just moved here four weeks ago. Everyone was so lovely and I met so many fun women, including someone who also lives on a large piece of property which includes her in-laws’ home. MY PEOPLE. Second only to the laughs and great company was the food: it was an appetizer-and-margarita night, which is a winning combination for me. I love making a dinner out of appetizers; to quote Juliet Litman, my ideal way of dining is Dips and Desserts. We all brought something and everything was so delicious; one woman brought bruschetta made exclusively from her garden items, which made me so excited to start my own garden next year. I am a Girl Who Needs Girls, and so it was so wonderful to be included into the circle. It reminded me of something I heard recently about Victoria Beckham, who taught her daughter that her number one job at school was to notice if there was someone alone in the playground, and then be friendly with that person. I feel like I am the girl alone on the playground, and Sammi is Victoria Beckham’s daughter, is what I’m saying.
  • Be Our Guest, Be Our Guest. We had our first houseguest this week, and it was my brother. If you know, you know. Because our old house was small and didn’t have a room for guests, we have actually never had houseguests before, so this was really fun. It was a super hot week – Tuesday was 39 degrees! – and sadly yesterday a huge fire broke out on the west side of the lake. We could see the flames from our house, which was frankly terrifying. My brother had left by that time, which was good because he would have been going through it; as of this morning I think the people who live out on that side – it’s not hugely populated, but there are people – are safe. There is some structural damage, but as of right now it’s not extensive.
The sole upside to smoky skies: sunsets.
  • Cross Canada Tour. Speaking of guests (I have looked at the word guest too many times and now it looks strange to me. Guest guest guest.) I will be guest-posting over at Elisabeth’s blog (HI ELISABETH)! Do you know Elisabeth? She and I have been friends since 2021, and I credit San (HI SAN) and her Secret Santa Mug Swap for introducing us. I think we were the only Canadians, so we got paired up and I couldn’t be happier to know her! Elisabeth is an organizational and thrifting QUEEN who should also be working for Tourism Nova Scotia, because her photos of her home province make everyone who sees them want to book a trip immediately. I am not sure when my guest post will be there – I have to write it first – but I haven’t guest-posted since probably 2010 SO THIS IS EXCITING.
  • I’ve Got The Key, I’ve Got The Secret. After twenty-three years of mail delivery to my door, I am getting used to having a community mailbox. The first few weeks I was here I had to borrow my mother-in-law’s mail key to access it, as in addition to sharing two acres, we share a mailbox. This should not have been a big deal, but it felt like a big deal; I would text her to see if I could borrow the key, which of course I could, then I would go to her house, and she’d have to get the key from its place in her car, and it simply felt like a lot to just get the mail. However, by the miracle that is Canadian Tire’s key cutting service, our house now has not one but two mail keys, and anyone can get the mail at any time. The timing for this was fortuitous as my dear, longtime friend Elise (HI ELISE) sent me an enormous care package with so many lovely things in it including chocolate goodies, and I was able to speed walk to the mailbox to get them before they melted. Did I mention it was 39 degrees? As a side note, Elise sent Cuban lunches, which I haven’t had in an AGE and I was so excited to get! Among SO MANY generous things, she also sent a bookmark, and my heart felt like the Grinch’s when it grew three sizes, seeing it.

We have been absolute social butterflies this week, and it looks like more of the same for the weekend! I love it! I was so worried about feeling lonely and isolated, moving here, but between new friends and old friends and long-distance friends sending love and even visiting (HI JANET), between family visits that have happened and family visits that will HOPEFULLY be happening NEXT MONTH (HI MOM) I am so happy and content. I hope you all have a wonderful, heart-filling weekend. xo

Acclimatizing

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Are You Feeling Hot! Hot! Hot!

Since I got here, it has been one beautiful day after another; summer here is absolutely gorgeous. If I had even one day like this in Calgary – warm and sunny, windless and without storms – I would be frantically spending every possible second outside, carpe diem, not wanting to waste a beautiful day. Weather there is always so volatile – one of my girlfriends texted me last week to say it was 13 degrees and pouring rain – so I’m ever so grateful to be living in a place where I can predict what the day will bring. Summer weather in the summer, what a novel concept!

I was a bit concerned, moving here, how Rex would do in the heat. He’s definitely a cold-weather dog, and I was worried that the temperatures would be too hot for him, but so far it has not been a problem. I walk him at 8:00 at the latest, and our walking route is a beautiful trail that is almost entirely shaded. It winds along a creek, which he enjoys drinking from and also is the reason his white paws are completely grubby all the time now. Attached to this path is an offleash park, which is also shaded and has water taps, bowls, and kiddie pools. It also had, one day, Rex’s doppelgänger.

As an aside, one of the first days I was at the offleash a very attractive young man was chatting with me and told me not to worry about the water in the bowls, he had just filled them, adding, ominously, You know, I don’t trust the old water, because of that woman. Wait, what woman? I told him I just moved here and he explained that there was a woman who would came to dog parks, with no dog, and poisoned the water in the bowls. Several dogs got sick and one actually DIED. I listened to this story with wide, horrified eyes, and was reminded of my days at the playground, how the young mothers would warily eye men without children, sitting on the benches. In any case, now that Rex has discovered the giant water bowl that is in the creek, he is completely uninterested in the water at the offleash.

I do love our morning walk route, but I have had to adjust to driving to get to the trail, rather than just strolling out the door, as I was used to doing. The first morning I was here I decided I WOULD walk to the trail; it was only about two kilometres, and I had used it as a running route before, so I was sure it would be just fine. Well. I had grossly misjudged how stressful it would be to walk down a busy road with no sidewalks, only a bike lane, with an enormous and excited dog bounding around, while cars zipped past. It took all my strength to keep the leash short and Rex on the inside, which backfired completely when he excitedly discovered not only a dead raccoon, but several squashed birds, at which point my soul briefly left my body. Suddenly, it didn’t seem like driving five minutes was such a hardship to be avoided.

International Costco Woman of Mystery

I have been slowly getting used to the grocery stores here. Sure, Superstore is Superstore, and Costco is Costco, but there are differences from what I’m used to. I think the biggest difference is that because Kelowna is just over a tenth of the size of Calgary, there is only one of each of those stores, and hence they are very busy. I made the mistake of going to Costco on a day that was a bit cooler and overcast – but still, temperature-wise, would have been considered a hot day in Calgary – and it was INSANE. It reminded me of the Costco in Maui, and just writing that makes me feel like I am a fancy world-Costco-traveller. Nicole: The International Costco Woman of Mystery could be the name of my memoir. Anyway, the layout was the same as the one in Maui and opposite of that in Calgary, which made it tricky to find everything on my list, and also it was so busy as to be almost impossible to maneuver through the aisles. It was literal bumper-to-bumper cart traffic. Perhaps it will be easier when tourist season is over.

The biggest difference for me, grocery-wise, is Superstore. It’s not just the layout, it’s the actual products that are available. Calgary in general and the part of the city in which I lived in particular is much more multicultural than here, and so the international foods aisle was always a cornucopia of fun and interesting items. Here, this is not the case. A quarter of the international aisle is filled with British products, like spotted dick, which I am not in the market for, culinary or otherwise, and the selection of Asian, Indian, and African items is pretty limited. I’m finding it hard to find noodles I like, is what I’m saying.

Hi Neighbourino

Probably the largest adjustment I have had to make has to do with my next-door neighbour. Before I get into that, a little context: my husband grew up on his family-owned vineyard, and about twenty years ago his family sold it and the attached winery, keeping two acres of it. The house in which we are living was originally his grandparents’; we added a second floor to it and took the existing house down to the studs, renovating it completely. It is such an incredibly fortunate thing to be able to live in a beautiful new house on a vineyard, overlooking the lake and the city. Every morning I wake up and look out the windows and feel so very lucky.

There is one thing that I feel you should know, and I’m mentioning it in a very casual, value-neutral way, and that is that there is another house on this two acre property, and that house belongs to my mother-in-law. While you absorb that information, I will hasten to assure you that my mother-in-law and I have a good relationship, albeit one that has been cultivated long-distance over the past twenty-five years. She is not one of those women who think that No One Is Good Enough For Her Precious Son; in fact, she thinks everything I do and every decision I make is Just Wonderful, Dear, which is lovely and, I think, rare. She is not a person who insists on having every meal together; in fact, I can’t even remember the last time we had a dinner together, it might have been Thanksgiving 2020.

But still, living next door is a lot different from twice-or-thrice annual visits, and so this is an adjustment to be sure, mostly a mental one. My main concern is maintaining boundaries and protecting personal privacy, for both of us, and mostly it’s been fine. We had an open and honest conversation about this prior to the move, which was INCREDIBLY difficult for me, because I don’t know how you grew up in the 80s and 90s, but open and honest conversation was not part of the story for me. In any case, there have been a few gentle bumps, but mostly it’s been fairly smooth sailing.

Bye Bye Birdie

In eighteen days, my older son is moving on campus for his first year at university. He’s so excited, and I’m so excited for him, and also, landslide. The university is close to us, so this feels like a very soft landing, but it’s still going to be a big change. In the meantime, I’m really cherishing having four faces at the dinner table. When he was working shift work this past year, I found myself thinking that the nights he was home for dinner was a real treat; this past month I feel spoiled having both the boys here all the time. What I am going to say is nothing new or original or earth-shattering, but I just love my boys so much; I am so proud of them both and I think they are incredible people, and I can hardly believe my luck that the universe gave them to me. It’s been so wonderful having them both here this summer, and of course it’s going to change very soon, and, like everything else, I will adjust to the changes. All you who have been through this know what it is.

I’m going to miss my son’s bartending skills; check out this mango margarita!

Weekly Reading

First of all, thank you all for your very kind comments of understanding and stories of hope, with regards to Bookmarkgate. So far they have not been recovered, but there are some boxes with garage items and gardening implements that I have not yet gone through, and although I’m not very hopeful, I’m not COMPLETELY hopeless. It’s more like 90% hopeless, as opposed to 100% before your lovely comments. We hosted our first dinner party this weekend and my sweet friend Sammi (HI SAMMI) brought me bookmarks as a housewarming, to “tide me over until the others were found.” I have such lovely friends!

Prep. When I was a kid I was obsessed with the idea of boarding school. It just seemed so fun and cool. Is it just me or does everyone think this? Anyway, this book is a very realistic portrait of a girl from Indiana who goes to a New England boarding school on scholarship; it shows her evolution from freshman to senior, and I really liked it. It showed an insular and privileged world, with all the angst of a teen in the 90s. I thought it was such a true picture of what it was to be a teen at that time, albeit in a very different life than the one I had.

Here we are at the end of a long weekend, and I hope yours was great. Have a lovely week, everyone! xo

Gnome Sweet Gnome

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In the last six weeks or so, I have listened to approximately one million podcasts, as I have been packing and cleaning and unpacking and DRIVING. It’s gotten to the point where I am wondering if I am in an unhealthy parasocial relationship with the hosts of my favourite ones, because I am relating to them so much. Several weeks ago, Kim from Everything Is Fine spoke about her recent move between Brooklyn apartments, and she said you just have to accept that everything is just going to suck for a while, and then one day you’ll feel like this is home, and when she said that, my ears perked up. I think at the time I was just in the beginning of the process, and those words stuck with me. It’s just going to suck for a while! And then it will feel like home!

The day the movers came – ten days ago now, already – was 37 degrees, RIP the movers and the guys, who were helping. It was such a busy and crazy day, and at the end of it, the guys were having a beer with the movers on the deck. I declined as I really just wanted to get the kitchen at least semi-unpacked, as it looked like this at the time:

My friend Tara (HI TARA) had warned me about what would happen, using the moving company to pack our things. She said you would find something packed super well and unwind all the packing paper, and it would be, like, a single pencil. I did not find any single pencils wrapped as such, but many times I did unwind enormous swaths of packing paper to reveal a single shot glass. Well, it was worth it since nothing was broken, but there was a lot of paper to be recycled.

Anyway, the guys were out having a beer and I was unpacking and arranging shot glasses and other kitchen-related items in the cupboards, when I saw the moving van drive away. At that point my sons burst into the house to tell me that I was desperately needed for One Last Box. By then, I had politely directed people where to put random boxes and pieces of furniture for HOURS, the doors were naturally opened the whole time and so the air conditioning was negated by the 37 degree heat, I had a pile of paper up to my knees JUST from shot glasses, and I was starving and wondering how to cobble together a dinner in such a mess. I did NOT want to go on the deck to make a decision about One Last Box, but the boys were laughing and smiling, and they just seemed so excited, and I didn’t want to be Bitchy Mom with everything going on. Also, I had just read the parenting chapters in Gabor Mate’s book The Myth of Normal, which I do not recommend you do, unless you want to feel like you have done everything wrong and have ruined your children for life. The rest of the book is good, just, maybe skip that part? Anyway, I put down my shot glass and followed them out on the deck, where they had an exacto knife for opening a wide, narrow box that was labeled “Gnomes.”

I don’t yet have a garden to call my own, so the gnomes have been on the deck, and have been moved around magically during the night. Here they are in a conga line:

It reminds me of when I first got Salvadore and it was too wintry for him to be outside, and his position in the house would change every day, like a garden version of Elf on a Shelf.

Even though I have become increasingly unsentimental about My Things, there are a few things that really have made Our House feel like Our Home, and I will say that gnomes are a huge part of it. I haven’t mentioned Julio and Jorge, who are plant pot gnomes acquired at the same time as Gustaf, but they are adorable little things. I do not have plant pots yet for this house, and so right now they are hanging out with the wooden flower I bought 24 years ago from IKEA to decorate our very first apartment, a tiny place 30 floors up in downtown Calgary.

Gaston the kitchen gnome is presiding over the kitchen.

Of course the Girls are enjoying their new spots in the kitchen as well.

The yoga frogs – and bunnies – have rounded out my kitchen decor nicely, which is making it feel very homey.

We are still in the process of hanging up the artwork, a process that will probably take a few weeks to figure out where things will look best, but my husband immediately put up my Desiderata beside my piano, which was the finishing touch on Things That Are Important To Me.

Speaking of things that are important to me, and circling back to podcasts, the incredible Alie Ward of Ologies said that her daily practice for mental, physical, and emotional health is represented by the mnemonic REM REM. The first REM stands for Reading, Exercise, and Meditation, and the second REM refers simply to sleep. I heard this and it cemented my parasocial relationship with her; it was all I could do not to send an email saying Me too, meeeee toooooo, we are besties now! In order to be at my best, every day I need to read, exercise, and meditate – I include yoga in the meditation part or, OR, I could escribo en espanol and say REM Y REM – and to get between seven and seven and a half hours of sleep. I have been squeezing in all of those things every day over the past little while, even whilst in Work Camp Mode. Sure, sometimes it’s just a little of each, and some days I did have less sleep than optimal, but for the most part I have adhered to this.

Now that all the major work has been done, I was able to spend the weekend in a more pleasurable way than being on my feet for fourteen hours and going through insane amounts of cleaning products. Saturday morning my older son and I went exploring on our bikes and it was so much fun. We rode up a grinder of a hill through the orchards, and then rode an absolutely terrifying – for me, not for him – downhill with no shoulder or bike lane, a curving, huge, steep hill; we rode down through the sun-baked creek valley and along the creek until we hit Lakeshore Road, and then circled back up a less-strenuous, but it was at the end of our ride so it FELT strenuous, hill home. I never rode my bike in Calgary as I was terrified of traffic, but there are bike lanes everywhere here – except, of course, on the giant scary hill – and I look forward to doing much more of it in the weeks and months to come. I mean, apparently it often doesn’t snow here until DECEMBER, which is such a foreign idea to me, I cannot even.

I have so many books to tell you about that I have managed to read in the past few weeks, but it will have to wait. Can you believe that it’s the end of July already? This month has flown by; I kind of feel like it should still be MAY. Well, here we are! I hope you have a wonderful week, and Happy August, my friends! xo

Five For Friday: The “We Moved!” Edition

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  • We did it! We moved! The house is almost entirely unpacked and organized and, relatedly, I am so physically tired. This may be as physically tired as I have ever been in my entire life. It would be an exaggeration to say that I have been on my feet every single day from the second I wake up to the second I go to bed, but not much of one. I realize that Not Everything Needs To Be Unpacked Immediately, but, well. After a couple of months of mess and disorganization in the old house, and a month of Pure Chaos, we all just want to be settled in and living in a clean and organized house. I mean, for a week before the move we were all eating dinner squashed on the couch around the coffee table, with one of my sons using the piano bench for a seat, as we had donated and gifted much of our furniture. We are all ready to resume life in a normal, non-boxed manner. And on that note, if you are planning a long-haul move, may I suggest having teenage boys and a handy, perfectionist husband? A few times this past week I have gone to bed and woken up to discover that my husband had built a whole row of shelves in the storage room, or that the guys had moved all the weights to nicely arrange the home gym. Since we have more vehicles than family members, getting them all there required some serious logistics. The weekend before the move, the guys drove out my husband’s car and my younger son’s truck, both completely full, including my Peloton and the extra dog crate (priorities!), and then flew back. I went to pick them up at the airport, and there was a problem with the gate. They sat on the tarmac for 75 minutes, which was about twenty minutes longer than their actual flight. Luckily I had taken a book with me, but let me tell you, tempers were FRAYED by the time they got into the car.
  • I missed the worst part of the move – the packing and the loading – as I drove myself and Rex out the day before the packers came. We all decided it would be best to not have Rex around while people packed boxes or loaded things into the truck, so I went to the new house early to clean and organize and buy groceries. The guys drove my husband’s truck and my older son’s car out two days after that, arriving late in the evening but before the movers arrived. I have driven that eight-hour route through the mountains many, many times, but never by myself, and never with so much stuff in the car that I couldn’t see out the rearview mirror. The drive itself was lovely and uneventful, and Rex did well in the car, which was a relief. It was a bit weird being in the new house alone; Rex and I were both really happy when the guys pulled in. I was also really happy that all our stuff made it in one moving van (plus all the multiple car and truck loads), with almost no damage. The guys helped the movers so much that the cost was actually less than half of what we thought it would be, so hooray for excessive late-teen testosterone. While helping a mover with the tremendously heavy granite-topped coffee table down the steps of our old lawn, an old lady pulled up and started a long conversation with my older son about our Christmas decorations and how she’d miss them, all the while the mover and my son had sweat pouring down their faces, biceps popping. It’s nice to be appreciated and missed, although my son thought the conversation could have happened when they weren’t carrying heavy furniture.

  • There is nothing like a move to make a person reconsider every possession owned. I have been obsessive about finding the perfect spot for absolutely everything, having learned from experience that I’ll just set this here until I find a better place is code for This is where this will live, forever. However, this is a very long and involved process and I have been constantly questioning whether or not we need an item. My sentimentality is long gone by this time and I am reminded of the poem by Mary Oliver entitled Storage. I kept saying things like “Do I REALLY need to keep this? Why do I still have my wedding dress?” which causes my husband to look at me with some alarm and say “I think you might want to keep your wedding dress, I think you might regret that.” But will I? Should I just keep it until I die and my great-grandchildren are saddled with all my fusty possessions, pressured to keep it until THEY die and have THEIR great-grandchildren wonder what this weird shred of possibly mouse-eaten material is?
  • This is probably bordering on the insane, but I have been cooking actual dinner every single night. Part of this is because there are no takeout places close by, and driving back and forth to get takeout would take as long as making a meal, and part of this is because the guys lived on takeout for about a week during the move and informed me that they missed my cooking So Very Much and were Dying For Vegetables. However! I will say that making a meal on top of unpacking, cleaning, and organizing for hours on end is the exhausting cherry on top of the taxing sundae.
  • Ever since I got here, everyone I have encountered – most notably my husband’s mother and sister – has treated me with kid gloves, assuming, I suppose, that I am One Toke Over The Breakdown Line. I welcome this gentle treatment, of course, but the honest truth is that I feel really great; I seem to have hopped the Melancholy Hurdle to start Embracing This Season of Life and Blooming Where I Am Planted. Probably this is because I have had numerous emotional breakdowns over the past several months, and so it is all out of my system. This is a good reminder of the benefits of Feeling Your Feelings, whatever they may be, and so if you too find yourself sobbing on your Peloton, hysterically cry-singing along with Miley Cyrus, IT IS OKAY. There will be a time after this, and you’re not alone.

I have much more to tell you, but it will have to wait. In the meantime: how are you? I’ve missed you all! Tell me everything that has been going on. xo