Category Archives: Playtime

Nicole’s Favourite Things: The Summer Essentials Edition

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I will confess that for many years, I thought the change of the seasons was highly overrated. In my defense, I was living in Calgary, where winter is endless, spring and fall are so short they could be considered almost nonexistent, and summer was marked by cold winds, thunderstorms, hail, and mosquitoes. I could really imagine myself living in a place like Maui, where the annual temperature fluctuation was less than ten degrees, and the sun shone happily every day.

Now I’m living in a place in which each season really is three months, and each builds into the next gradually, rather than going straight from Snow to Mosquitoes. I can really appreciate the beauty in each season and what they have to offer. That said, I am truly a Summer Girl at heart.

I love summer. I love the ease of getting dressed, I love wearing skorts and sandals, I love that “stepping into an oven” feeling when I come out of an air-conditioned house, I love the abundance of fresh produce, I love my garden, I love my flowers, I love it all! I don’t love the occasional smokey skies and the existential angst of being in a drought and thinking about the state of the world, but you know what, there is no sense in being anxious about something I can do almost nothing about. Stuff your worries in a sack, and then take that sack and frolic in the sunshine. Or, as Mary Oliver says, take your old body out in the morning and sing.

Nicole’s Favourite Things: The Summer Essentials Edition

Hello Hawaii

Recently my dear friend Suzanne (HI SUZANNE) was talking about “signature scents,” and I realized that in summer, my signature scent is Hawaiian Tropic sunscreen.

I love that coconutty floral scent, and I also love how it adds a little shimmer to my skin, in addition to being a great sun protectant. On the parts of my body that are not exposed to the sun, I have been using Nivea “Firming” lotion this summer, and I would like to go on the record to say that “firming” is too tall an order for a bottle of lotion. However, it is a really good moisturizer, with a light scent that allows the Hawaiian Tropic to shine through.

You Otter Know

Speaking of Hawaii, some of you might remember that we took many spring break vacations to Maui when the boys were younger.

2012

Since the boys were fairly young, and since Maui is a pretty expensive place, we would always go to Costco and the grocery store, and make most of our meals at the condo we would rent. And if you are a Canadian going into a US grocery store, no doubt you will be able to relate to our feelings of awe and wonder when we did so. US grocery stores have an incredible variety of cereals, cookies, and other snack foods, in comparison with those in the Great White North. As a brief aside, I clearly remember “going across the line” when I was a very young child, and trying a Twinkie for the first time. I was so excited. Twinkies were not then available in Canada, but they were heavily advertised in Archie comics, and I Could Not Wait to try one. Imagine, then, my grave disappointment when first it hit my lips. The idea was better than the execution.

Anyway, Maui grocery stores were literal heaven for my children, who had never seen such a vast array of packaged goods, like Young Nicole as regards Hostess snack cakes. Nowhere was this wide variety more apparent than in the frozen treat aisle, where my children were introduced to Otter Pops. They had, of course, had Mr Freeze and other such treats, but we were incredibly charmed by Otter Pops, with their clever names and array of flavours. Sir Isaac Lime! Little Orphan Orange! Poncho Punch!

Fast forward to this summer, when I was in Costco and I saw Otter Pops! I immediately and nostalgically texted our family chain, asking if I should buy some, expecting that I would get, at best, a “ha ha” reaction. But no! My son said “sure” and to make a very long and quite uninteresting story short, we have been enjoying Louie Bloo Raspberry and his friends as after dinner treats.

I like that they don’t have food colouring in them anymore, I like that they are small enough to be just that tiny bit of sweetness that is sometimes required after dinner, and I love that each treat reminds me of those vacations with the boys.

2013
2014
2014

Everything Happens For A Riesling

On the topic of refreshing treats, let’s talk wine. I am a red wine girl, but in the summer, I love a crisp glass of white. I love buying local, and I cannot get any more local than Tantalus Vineyards. Their 2025 Riesling is award-winning and highly rated, and it’s a perfect drink for a Friday on the deck.

Clawing Back

I love a boozy beverage or glass of wine as much as the next person, but sometimes I want a little something that is nonalcoholic. My friend Sammi (HI SAMMI) introduced me to NA White Claw.

I was a bit skeptical as I don’t like the regular White Claw, but these are delicious and refreshing. The mango is a great flavour, as are lime and black cherry.

Getting Off

If you are having an outdoor event, you should invite me. It’s an insurance against mosquito bites, because I will get them all. If there is a single mosquito within a four kilometre radius, it is going to find me and bite me, and then the bite will swell enormously only to eventually fade into a purple welt and, later, a bruise. I am so sexy and irresistible to mosquitoes and any other biting insect. They love me. They cannot get enough of me. I am Paul McCartney at the height of Beatlemania, and mosquitoes are my screaming fans, all wanting a little piece of me and my blood. My husband sometimes victim blames me for “not wearing proper clothing” because I am often, like a dance hall girl in the Yukon gold rush, boldly exposing my ankles and arms. But I will say the victim blaming is unfair, as clothing is only a small hurdle for mosquitoes to conquer; they can and do bite right through such impermeable articles as jeans and raincoats. If you are siding with my husband right now, claiming that it is not possible, let me assure you that it IS. I have had bites on both my bum and my mid back while wearing such clothing, and I promise I did not expose those parts of my body. I think the only clothing solution would be to don a full-on beekeeper-style outfit, and I am just not willing to do that to walk the dog.

I have tried natural remedies, I have tried every hippie, plant-based, essential oil-infused product there is, and every time, every single time I have been immediately swarmed. There is only one thing I will use, and it’s DEET.

Listen, I don’t love spraying my entire body with Deep Woods Off every morning before our walk, but I would rather bathe in DEET than be covered in welts, bruises, and bites, downing Benedryl every night just to get some relief. I always shower post-walk-and-garden, and so if I’m low-key poisoning myself, it’s only for a few hours each day. Even with the afore-mentioned drought, mosquitoes still abound in the early morning near the shady creek where we walk. Or, at least a few abound. Yesterday I thought it had been hot and dry enough that I would forgo the Deep Woods, and sure enough, I have three enormous, very itchy bites. They may have been the only three mosquitoes in the valley, but they found me. At this rate I will be Deep Woods-ing myself until fall.

The creek is practically nonexistent, where are the mosquitoes coming from? Rex doesn’t know.

Outfit of the Month

Recently my friend Birchie (HI BIRCHIE) said just because we don’t live near the ocean doesn’t mean we can’t go to the beach, which I took as a sexual euphemism of some sort. I don’t know what sort. But of course what she meant was that lake beaches are good beaches, and I have many such at my disposal.

When we used to come here on summer vacation, we would take the boys to the beach almost every day. Then, we moved here, and I rarely, if ever, go to the beach. I walk adjacent to the beach frequently. I drive by the beach all the time. But I don’t go, and that is a real shame.

My friend Joy (HI JOY) suggested a picnic and visit at the beach, and I just can’t believe we don’t do this more often. She also kindly took these outfit photos: comfy coverup dress from La Vie En Rose, and Skecher sandals.

The handkerchief tankini top and swim bottoms are also from La Vie En Rose. I find they always have great end-of-season sales, and I have gotten a lot of mix-and-match pieces very inexpensively over the years. Plus, it’s a Canadian company!

Summer is half over already! I am going to take my old body out into the morning and sing. I hope you have had a beautiful July, my friends. What are your favourites this month? Tell me everything. xo

Don’t tell me what to do, whimsical rock!

Nicole’s Favourite Things: The Fight The Gloom Edition

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November is such a grey and gloomy month, isn’t it? As I write this, the sun rises at 7:29 am and sets at 4:02 pm, and those precious daylight hours are only going to get worse before they get better. However! November is also the month of Tiny Secret Festive Season, which morphs into Full On Festive Season, and all the happiness and light that brings to me. In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer. It’s not the depth of winter, not even close, but the sentiment stands. In the depth of November, within me I found some Favourite Things.

Nicole’s Favourite Things: The Fight The Gloom Edition

It’s Puzzle Season, Motherfuckers

November through March – i.e., the non-garden season – is unofficially Puzzle Season around here. I love a good puzzle but I definitely gravitate towards the less difficult realm. Do I want to go insane while staring at 1000 pieces of hell? No I do not. My husband is a person who enjoys wildly difficult puzzles, like the one we did of a canoe on a lake with a background of mountains, or the one of Queen Elizabeth’s coronation in which every single piece was the exact same shape. I like a series of vignettes, is what I’m saying.

The completed puzzle!

My older son gave this Jane Austen puzzle to me for my birthday, and I saved it to kick off Puzzle Season. It’s a very special puzzle because the photo on the box does not contain the solution. The Puzzler must put the characters together, figure out who goes with whom, and then use the conversational clues to figure out how to arrange them for the final product.

ELL-OH-ELL Mr Darcy

You need to be a Fan, is what it boils down to.

Oh, Caroline Bingley. Go pretend to read a book.

It’s a really clever idea and it was so much fun. I tried to explain WHY it was so amusing to my family, and their eyes started glazing over.

Fun fact: I used It’s Puzzle Season, Motherfuckers for a Favourite Things last December, and it also included a Jane Austen puzzle! Will the pattern continue? Check in with me in 2026!

Oh, I’m Writing My Life Away

On the topic of Items Received For My Birthday That I Am Using Seven Months Later, my dear friend Suzanne (HI SUZANNE) sent me this notebook.

Mary Oliver!

I was absolutely delighted, and I knew that I wanted to save it for a special use. Right now Inhale Exhale is out for review with Clarion, which means that the process is out of my hands, as nerve-wracking as that is. Time to redirect that nervous energy and start something new!

Work in progress.

Two of the women in my writing group, Gill and Michela (HI GILL HI MICHELA) swear by Morning Pages; they say that there is something about it that really sparks creativity. I am not at the Morning Pages Life Stage yet, but I have been using Suzanne’s gorgeous notebook to handwrite thoughts about my new project in a very stream-of-consciousness way. And I have to say, it has worked. Creativity has been sparked!

On the same topic:

Isn’t that a beautiful cover? I am SO pleased with it. If you’re wondering what it’s about, wonder no more!

My publisher, Friesen Press, is a hybrid one, which means that my path to publication is not traditional and I won’t have the ability to pre-order, or to give you an exact release date quite yet. However! It will be available at all the usual bookstores, and the MINUTE I have that information, it will be here on the blog, it will be on my Instagram, it will be on Facebook, it will be sung from my own rooftop. I absolutely loved writing this, and I hope people will love reading it.

Me and my writing buddy.

She Walked Up To Me and She Asked Me To Pose…Y-O-G-A Yoga

I realize that a discussion of yoga mats might be more topical in, say, January, but in my mind ANY time is a good time for yoga. Also, it’s possible that one might want a yoga mat for Christmas, and I have very strong feelings on this topic.

As a small digression, I would like to go on the record to say that yoga truly is for everyone. No one is “bad at yoga.” No one “can’t do yoga.” No one is “too stiff” to do yoga. There are as many ways of practicing yoga as there are people on this earth. Some people do seated postures on a mat, some people do standing postures, some people sit in a chair, some people lie in savasana. And, as I said sternly to my husband and son who were watching a commercial with a football player doing a barre practice while someone jeered, no yoga teacher has ever “laughed at” a student. If such a thing has ever occurred, it has not been in my hearing, and I would posit a theory that such a person is not truly a yoga teacher. Yoga teachers are almost exclusively a gentle, loving bunch who only want the best for their students. If a person can sit quietly and listen to the sound of their breath for thirty seconds, THEY ARE DOING YOGA. Yoga doesn’t necessarily mean putting legs behind one’s head, although it can. Yoga doesn’t necessarily mean touching one’s toes, although it can. Yoga is LIFE and it is practicing loving-kindness to oneself and to the world around us, and it means leaving a room a little brighter than one found it. In this definition, I would venture to say that we are all yogis. We are all practicing yoga every day, or at least we have the potential to. Being able to touch one’s toes is a nice thing, but it doesn’t define a yoga practice.

Back to the topic at hand, which is my own personal physical yoga practice, and my mat of choice, which is a Manduka Pro Black Mat. It is expensive, yes, but it is the best mat on the market. It is thick and heavy and doesn’t move around while you practice, even if you are taking vigourous vinyasas. It gives cushion for the knees and for the sitz bones, and mine are going to go with me to my grave. My (theoretical) great-grandchildren will be cleaning out my room at The Home and will wonder why Grandma had so many mats.

Because I do have SO many mats. There are four – FOUR – Manduka Pros in this house, although one is my husband’s, given by me for Christmas one year.

My husband’s mat, foam roller, and yoga balls. I feel like a picture is worth a thousand words here.

One of the mats was purchased to leave at this house, when we lived in Calgary, so that I didn’t have to schlep it back and forth. Another was my practice mat, which I kept in a storage space at the Yoga Shala, and the other was my teaching mat, which lived in my minivan and would be taken to all the non-Shala places I used to teach. And then the pandemic happened, and the Shala closed, and my classes went from ten a week to two, and those two were taught via zoom; my need for multiple mats evaporated, but my mats live on.

The collection.

Ever since my friend Gillian (HI GILLIAN) turned me on to them in 2009, I have been a devotee of the mat cover. These microfibre covers serve several purposes: a) they keep your hands and feet from slipping by being grippier the more sweaty one gets, which is good news for a sweaty gal like myself, b) although this seems to completely contradict what I just said, it makes your feet slide nicely when doing vinyasa, c) it feels nicer than a naked rubber mat, and d) it keeps the mat clean and is machine-washable. Need I say more? And yes, I have three, one for each of my mats.

The practice space, complete with practice buddy in doughnut pose.

Friluftsliv!

A little while ago, my friend Sarah (HI SARAH) said plaintively in response to all the autumnal celebrations that fall is already really nice, what are we doing about winter? Well, what I do, and what I have done for the past five and a half years, is to embrace my half-Norwegian heritage and the concept of friluftsliv, which means that life is best lived outside. I go outside every single day and I also embrace the somewhat strident Scandinavian belief that there is no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothes. To that end, I want to talk about something that has definitely made my Favourites in the past: the bum warmer.

Walking In Winter Fashion

A woman in Calgary that I met through a Yoga Shala holiday market buys old sweaters at thrift stores and transforms them into a skirt-like item, the bum warmer, and then uses the remainder to make headbands and mittens. You would not believe the difference this makes, warmth-wise! I have three of them but this is my festive season set. I top off the look with legwarmers and a toque, and I am cozy and toasty and ready for the outdoors. It’s very hygge, and also very ecologically friendly.

You Don’t Know What You’ve Got ‘Til It’s Gone

To think I took something as mundane as the mail for granted for almost my whole life. I didn’t realize how much happiness sending and receiving mail gave me, particularly during the holidays, until the Canada Post strike shut it all down last year. I am a little scarred from that experience, and have been frantically writing out my cards in order to get them into the mail, just in case the current rotating strikes turn into a full-blown one.

On a recent episode of The Girl Next Door podcast, one of the hosts talked about her secret fear of getting a paper cut on her eye, and while I don’t share that particular worry, I am always concerned that I’m going to get one on my tongue while licking envelopes. Anyway.

I loved pen pals when I was younger and it’s a thrill now to have my own grown-up ones. Sometimes it’s more than a postcard or a note; last week I received a parcel from my friend Lisa (HI LISA).

Imagine my surprise when it contained a SIGNED copy of Wreck! I almost fainted. Lisa! Talked to Catherine Newman! And she signed a book just for ME! I could die. Have I read it yet? No, because I still have eleven library books that need reading. But I cannot WAIT. Thanks Lisa!

Outfit of the Month

In the spirit of shopping my closet, everything in this outfit is at least seven years old, with the exception of the jeans. It’s a whole thing with Jean. Please don’t make me relive my Jeans Crisis.

The lined coat is from lululemon, circa 2013, and the sweater is from the same place but a few years later. The boots are lightly lined and perfect for this weather right now – not too warm, but warm enough.

What are you doing to stave off the Novemberies? I know my dear friend Michelle (HI MICHELLE) is celebrating Gnomevember, but I would posit that every month is Gnomevember in the Boyhouse. Tell me all your Favourites this month, I would love to hear them. 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

Together Again

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The Boys Are Back In Town

My husband and son have returned from their hiking trip in Scotland! They hiked the West Highland Way, which worked out to be 154 kilometres over eight days, and they enjoyed Edinburgh as well. It was quite the adventure, and it’s great to have them home.

After two weeks of eating out, they were pretty excited for some, as my husband put it, home cooking. For some reason that phrase feels like a weird sexual euphemism, I blame Paul Newman. In any case, both of them requested a Big Fun Salad, and I was only too happy to comply.

Salad Days

They had great timing, as it turned out, because I just cut what was the last of the kale and spinach. I have pulled the plants and will be reseeding in a few weeks, when the bulk of the hot weather has subsided for the year, and hopefully I will have a nice fall harvest.

I guess it will be farm market kale and spinach for me until mid-September, but in the meantime, I am not short of tomatoes or zucchini.

Zen and the Art of Gardening and Piano Playing

These vegetables don’t grow themselves, people. Well, the zucchinis kind of do. But the garden itself takes a lot of work and I spend at least an hour a day tending to it, the perennials, and my flower pots. I always leave my phone in the house and just concentrate on the plants, and it is a very zen practice. There is something so meditative about weeding, which, along with laundry, is one of the most Sisyphean tasks ever. Other Sisyphean garden tasks include picking tomatoes and zucchini, but those tasks at least result in yumminess.

I read The Connection Cure this week – more about that in the Weekly Reading section – and it sparked a lot of thinking about the things we do for our mental and physical health. Gardening is one of them for me, but I don’t know if I would say that I am always in the moment while doing it. More likely, while I weed or deadhead or harvest, my mind is wandering about what the hell am I going to do with all these tomatoes, do I have time to roast them later to freeze, and how long will it take to grate up all these zucchinis, and also what am I going to write about this week, and would anyone be interested in a deep dive on The Duchess, and how sexy was Ralph Fiennes, and I wonder if The English Patient is on Netflix and would it be weird to just fast-forward to all the sexy scenes, and how Lady Chatterley’s Lover was basically soft-core porn, and also they changed the ending, and oh my god, look at that butterfly!

Similar things happen in my brain when I’m walking or cooking or doing anything household-task-related, but almost never while I’m exercising or practicing yoga. The one time I can guarantee that I will 100% be in the moment is when I’m playing piano. I have seen people carry on conversations while playing, but I absolutely cannot. I don’t even think about the next note, I am only ever thinking about the note I am playing the second that I am playing it, which makes it, for me, the most Zen practice of them all. I mean, if I so much as thought of Ralph Fiennes I would lose my place in the music, let alone any idle thoughts about my husband pretending to be a gamekeeper on a large English estate, asking me if I would like coarser treatment.

Freshen Your Drink, Governor?

As I mentioned last week, I have taken the opportunity of alone time to watch several British period dramas, and they have not disappointed. Despite my general dislike of book-to-screen adaptations, I rewatched Sense and Sensibility, which, along with Emma and Pride and Prejudice, cycles in and out of being my Number One Jane Austen Favourite Book. I also watched the aforementioned Lady Chatterley’s Lover, which contains not only full frontal nudity but also such graphic sex scenes that I did wonder how they could possibly be filmed without actual penetration, or at least a massive boner on the part of the gamekeeper. I score pretty much zero on the Kinsey scale, and yet I never want to see full frontal male nudity on the big screen, even when the screen is just my TV. As Elaine Benes said, The female body is a work of art. The male body is utilitarian. It’s for getting around, like a Jeep.

Nudity or not, the movie was completely engrossing, as was The Duchess – so good! – and The Other Boleyn Girl, which, along with a rewatch of the first three episodes of Downton Abbey, completed my British Period Drama Fortnight.

There is a growing movement among streaming services to cater to what is called second-screening, which is the phenomenon of watching TV while being on a phone. Streaming services are creating shows that are meant to be watched while distracted, and so there will be a lot of repeated dialogue and summarization of events.

I put the blame entirely on the glorification of multitasking, which I consider to be an incredibly harmful and focus-fracturing concept. Just like I cannot talk and play piano simultaneously, no one, but no one, can actually put mental energy into two things at the same time. It’s just not possible! Sure, we are all listening to podcasts while folding laundry, but I would submit that folding laundry requires very little mental energy. The idea that we can scroll on our phones while watching a movie and absorb any information at all is ridiculous. Bring back single-tasking! Let’s just focus on doing one thing at a time! Including watching TV!

I’m Your Biggest Fan, This Is Stan

Something that almost always absorbs all my attention is a good book; I love that feeling of just sinking into a delicious state of reading. If you follow me on Instagram you know that I post all of my book reviews over there, and I have mixed feelings about that. On the one hand, I want to be honest in all my reviews, but on the other hand, I don’t want to be mean or negative if I don’t enjoy a book. It’s a tricky balance, but on the flip side, I want everyone to know when I truly love a book, and if you remember from last week, I posted a glowing review about Standard Deviation by one of my favourite authors, Katherine Heiny.

I casually logged into Instagram to see that I had a new follower, and friends, I cannot be calm or casual about this: KATHERINE HEINY HAD FOLLOWED ME. Not only that, but she sent me a direct message saying that she was “flattered to be anyone’s writing goals, but you are very funny already.” OH MY GOD PEOPLE.

I might have passed out for a moment. Katherine Heiny! Sent me a message! I have all of her books on my Favourites Shelf! I am as starstruck as a person could be! Katherine Heiny, who I adore and whose writing is over-the-top incredible!

NO I CANNOT CHILL.

And speaking of books…

Weekly Reading

The Connection Cure. I heard this author interviewed on the Ologies podcast, and I found her so fascinating that I knew I would have to read her book. Social prescriptions are growing around the world, and address environmental factors in wellness; instead of asking “what is the matter with you,”’ the question is “what matters to you.” There is a growing body of empirical evidence that links positive health outcomes with movement, time in nature, artistic endeavours, acts of service, and a feeling of belonging. It is all very common sense, but still it was shocking to me to read about the loneliness epidemic, how it has increased since 2020, and the debilitating impacts it can have on health. An important note is that social prescriptions – finding a community, helping a person discover a feeling of belonging, or joy through art, along with movement practices and time in nature – are to be used in conjunction with modern medicines and therapies. Overall an interesting read.

How To Be Married. Jo Piazza is a pretty buzzy author these days, but this book – part memoir, part non-fiction dive into how marriage is viewed in other countries and cultures – came out in 2017, before the buzz. It’s been a while since I myself was a newlywed – in fact, I don’t really remember what our first year of marriage was like – but I found this to be an entertaining and touching read. The tagline mentions her “really hard” first year of marriage, and my thoughts ran to infidelity, dark secrets, and disagreements about loading the dishwasher, but the reality was much sadder. Four months after she was married, the author learned that she had the genetic mutation for muscular dystrophy, which had left her own father extremely disabled and her mother – his caretaker – to have a nervous breakdown from the stress and resentment that comes from being a caretaker. She also lost her job right after they signed a mortgage on a house in San Francisco, a notoriously expensive city. I found the book very interesting and the peek into other cultures to be fascinating. Apparently I am like a Frenchwoman, I learned, as I would never in a million years use the toilet with the door open. Some things, as the Frenchwomen said, should be private.

The God of Small Things. My friend Maya (HI MAYA) had mentioned this book and I was surprised that I hadn’t already read it, as it was published in 1997. It is a heartbreaking, beautifully written book about a family in Kerlala, a terrible tragedy, and the shocking aftermath. It concerns caste, family ties, and dark secrets, and it is so moving and absolutely compelling. The story jumps timelines which might be confusing to some, but I found I was completely immersed, and so I was able to absorb it in stride.

I’ve wanted to see Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat for thirty years, and on Friday I finally did! We were in the front row, which meant two of my girlfriends ended up receiving leis from one of the cast members – cue getting lei’d jokes – and it was a really great night out. As a child, the story of Joseph was one that was incredibly wild and disturbing to me – parental favouritism, selling one’s sibling to slavery, tricking another sibling into thinking he was going to be imprisoned or killed – but the musical itself is a hoot. I hope your week is filled with delight and music, and doing only one thing at a time. xo

Woes and Wins

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In the past two months, four podcasts that I follow have recorded their final episodes ever. Four! Two of those were the kind of podcasts that I would actively look forward to and would download and listen to as soon as I could, and those two are as different as can be: Dear Prudence, an advice column show that featured some really unhinged questions, and Cookbook Club, which can only be described as the Schweddy Balls SNL sketch, but with cookbooks and food topics. And now they are OVER and I am low-level bereft.

The other two podcasts – Fat Mascara and A Thing or Two – were recent finds for me. Oh yay, these podcasts are so fun, they are exactly what I was looking for, I thought, mere weeks before they announced that they were shutting down their chatty operations. I am sure if I wanted to I could go back and listen to a decade’s worth of a back catalogue, but I don’t want to. I would rather sulk, I guess.

Not quite as distressing but almost, one of my longest-loved podcasts, Forever 35, switched co-hosts a year ago, and I have tried, lord, how I have tried to embrace the new woman with open arms, but friends, I cannot. The whole energy and focus of the podcast has changed in a way that I don’t enjoy, and I find the new host grating. Stop complaining about your dog and spend some time with him is a thing I said out loud, while walking my own dog, to the podcast host who cannot hear me.

While sulking, I listened to a music podcast that talked about – of all things – General Hospital. I have not, in the entirety of my life, watched a single daytime soap episode, much less the longest-running one of all time, but I did know about the supercouple Luke and Laura, thanks to my endless perusing of my grandma’s stack of Star magazines in the eighties (“the paper“). What I did not know, and what was alluded to in the podcast, was the scandalous way they met, and so of course I immediately looked it up, and was startled to discover that they met when Luke RAPED Laura. Their wedding remains to this day the most-watched daytime television episode, with over thirty million viewers, including Princess Diana, and it guest starred Elizabeth Taylor. This celebrated soap opera couple started with a RAPE? It’s true the 70s and 80s were a different time and yet this rape of an 18-year-old woman by a 33-year-old man doesn’t really feel like the start of an epic romance that one might wish for.

As a brief aside, I have previously discussed the Peloton hashtag #therapistsofpeloton, which never fails to amuse me, but the other day I was riding with a person whose leaderboard name was none other than Therapistrides. I went back to search it to see if I had been hallucinating, so early in the morning, and found not only that person but also Therapistdad, which felt infinitely worse. Are these people just totally lacking in SNL Jeopardy awareness? Or are they, like my son suggested, not therapists but actual rapists who have found community through spin bike exercise? And you’re SHAMING them, Mom, he said.

Back to General Hospital: the podcast also mentioned a plotline in which an evil scientist was building a machine which would freeze the world and plunge its inhabitants into an Ice Age, which made me think a) is that evil scientist actually Dr. Doofenschmirtz, and b) where can I find recaps of every plotline on General Hospital? The latter was easy, but overwhelming; a quick search revealed thousands of such websites, Reddits, and blog posts.

I feel judged that DuoLingo thought I needed to know this phrase, although given this unhinged post, it’s not wrong.

In other news, I hit a blip in my 100-Day Project. When I decided I was going to play the piano daily for 100 straight days, I did not have any travel planned; but because our semi-last minute road trip to visit my parents, I missed four days. I gave myself grace for this: obviously pianos are not portable, and I just thought I’d add on the four days at the end. But then! Then two Fridays ago I was busy all day and I simply forgot, and this forgetting made me feel completely derailed. I have, as I see it, three options: a) add another day to the end and just get on with my life, b) start over from Day One, or c) lie down on the Train Tracks of Shame and allow myself to be run over by the Steam Engine of Failure. I am going to go with a), mostly because we have so many travel plans coming up that I am not actually going to be home for 100 consecutive days over the next year and a half.

I am home for the remainder of the summer, however, which is wonderful because it means I can enjoy my garden every single day.

I have been able to harvest a lot of spinach for my smoothies, but I seem to be able to only get one cutting before it starts to bolt, which means I’ve reseeded several times. I think we are entering in the “too hot for greens” season, unfortunately, but on the upside, this is great for my jungle-like tomato plants and for the peppers. Also on the downside:

Not a single chive sprouted! What the what. Well, they can’t all be wins.

Weekly Reading

Woes and wins continue with reading! Well, “woe” might be a bit much for this first read, more like “not a win.”

Deep Cuts. First off I will say that I finished this book on a Sunday night, and when I went to write a review of it for my records, I couldn’t remember how it ended. Less than ten hours had passed and I couldn’t have told you the ending. So. There’s that. This book takes place in the early 2000s and deals with the indie music scene, and when I say “deals with” I mean “we are deep in the details of songwriting, music writing, becoming a music critic, recording, and performing.” DEEP. At its heart is a story of romance and of friendship, of support and betrayal, and of being heard. It got a bit in the weeds for me, although I did like the dissection of songs and lyrics. The author is from Hope, BC, which was very exciting for this BC writer!

Show Don’t Tell. I have enjoyed Sittenfeld’s earlier works, most notably her novel Romantic comedy and her short story collection You Think It, I’ll Say It, and so my expectations for this new collection of short stories were high. I was not disappointed! This exceeded all my hopes; this could not be more Nicole-coded if it tried! Short stories about women’s lives, the ordinary made extraordinary, slice-of-life tales. It was an absolutely perfect book for me, no notes! I loved every word of every story but particularly this line: “Other people have unhappiness inside them, and they want to get rid of it, and it comes out as meanness.” Brilliant.

One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This. This is a very emotionally draining and moving book by a renowned Egyptian-Canadian journalist and author, about Western involvement in the Middle East generally, and in Gaza in particular. It questions the West’s ability to effectively dehumanize and dissociate from frank horrors, but, apart from asking for a ceasefire, offers no answers. And maybe that’s the point. This is an important read to be sure.

A funny thing I’ve noticed, living in Retirementland, that every weekend is a long weekend/ no weekend is a long weekend/ what is a weekend. The same could be said for mid-week holidays, like when Canada Day falls on a Tuesday. It nearly went completely unnoticed by me, which felt unacceptable given the state of things these days. I celebrated by ditching my black wardrobe for red and white:

And although I don’t typically imbibe on a weekday, what better way to mark the holiday than with a local (VERY LOCAL) rose?

Red plus white equals rose; Canada Day Rose should be a thing, and I’m making it so. Elbows up, nolite te bastardes carborundorum, etcetera. I hope you all have a beautiful week, with more wins than woes. xo

Let The Music Play

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Turkish Delight, On A Moonlit Night

I am currently in a delightful chapter in my life in which my children are grown and my husband and I are healthy and mobile, and so we have big plans to do a lot of travelling. It’s a big world out there and I want to see as much as I can for as long as I can; no one knows what the future will bring, and so I want to experience as much of other countries and cultures as I can.

Recently we have been talking about Türkiye, which I briefly visited as a teen on a school trip, and would love to see a lot more of. Unfortunately, the planning for this trip may be the undoing of my sanity. Every time I hear, see, or even think of the word “Istanbul,” I immediately follow it up in my head with was Constantinople, now it’s Istanbul not Constantinople, been a long time gone, Constantinople. And that’s the best case scenario; frequently I will go through the entire song in my head before I can rest. Why did Constantinople get the works? That’s nobody’s business but the Turrrrrkkkkksss. Istanbullll.

I don’t know what percentage of my brain is dedicated to song lyrics and other quotations, but it’s significant. I wonder what incredible things I could accomplish, were I able to clear my mind of Getting Jiggy With It, a song that went through my head incessantly when I was writing my very last exam in grad school. I got an A in that exam, so I guess it all worked out, but I’m not sure I’ve ever really recovered from scribbling down equations to the mental chorus of no love for the haters the haters mad cuz I got floor seats at the Lakers see me on the fifty yard line with the Raiders.

Speaking of which, one only need say to me here’s the situation before I mentally reply my parents went away on a week’s vacation.

Does everyone’s mind work this way, or is it just me? One of my favourite scents from Bath and Body Works is Butterfly, and every time, every single time I select that body lotion post-shower, I hum to myself See the dog and butterfly, up in the air he likes to fly.

Seriously, if I could rid my mind of song lyrics, random quotations from movies, Seinfeld, and the Simpsons, along with toxic diet culture, I would be a fresh book waiting to be filled. Staring at the blank page before you…

It’s Not Easy Being Green

We’ve had quite a bit of rain lately, which means that everything is greening up. It’s also likely the reason Kermit was hanging out on my door last week. In any case, it’s officially Garden Season, so prepare yourselves for an onslaught of Garden Updates for the next six months or so. I planted my first rows of kale and spinach on the weekend, the berry patch is all budding, and my husband and I went to the plant nursery. It is way, way too early to plant tender veggies like tomatoes and peppers, and yet I came home with exactly that.

I’ll be bringing these in every night for the next month.
Housewarming gift from the incomparable Suzanne, (HI SUZANNE), relevant to my interests.

Oh, and on the topic of green things, I have an update to my avocado woes. I bought a bag of avocados at Superstore, and, like a person completely beaten down by life, expected nothing out of them. Why did I buy them then? I don’t know. Maybe there was a shred of hope left in my soul. But then when I cut them open, every last one was perfect. It was enough to restore my faith in the world.

Ladies, Leave Those Umbrellas At Home!

My dear friend Sandi (HI SANDI) invited me along with her sister to a paint night this week, and as usual, it was so much fun. I did have doubts about my own skills, however, when I saw the sample painting. My initial thought was no way, this is going to be a mess, but you know what, it turned out pretty well!

I will say that the teacher, as well as anyone else who walked behind me and observed my painting, said repeatedly oh, that’s so interesting, what you’re doing with the skirt. To pull a quote from one of my favourite Seinfeld episodes, WHAT? I HAD A DIFFERENT INTERPRETATION! And if you can name that deep cut episode off the top of your head, let me know and I will send you a prize. What will the prize be? I have no idea.

It reminded me of my probably long-deceased childhood piano teacher, Mrs. Rechel. Along with exam pieces for the Royal Conservatory, I was encouraged to choose some “modern” pieces to play for fun. Frequently I would be playing these pieces of choice for her, and her mouth would just be a thin line. Oh, that’s very interesting, she would say, or, in some cases, Hmm. It’s certainly different.

Hot Carl In The City

Speaking of things that are different, I was reminded this week of the day back in 2012, when a car parked in my neighbourhood had a license plate HOT CARL. I remember wondering about the owner of this car, if his name was Carl and he had very high self-esteem, and then someone pointed out to me that a Hot Carl is a sex act that involves feces. To this day I think about this. Was the car owner really into Hot Carls? Or was he just a guy named Carl who thought he was all that and a bag of chips? Or – and here’s another deep cut – was he a fan of The Simpsons? This mystery is one for the ages. It will never be solved. Unless, of course, he (I assume that this person is a he) reads this and chimes in. Carl, are you there?

I came across this thought circuitously, because Jenny (HI JENNY) had posted an interesting photo of a car, a Range Rover no less, that proclaimed across its rear window Make Money Not Friends. You know what, I admire that kind of honesty. I would rather see that then some asshole who is cutting people off and behaving badly with a bumper sticker saying Choose Kindness. At least with the Range Rover, you know where you stand, and you would also expect to be cut off in traffic. Although I guess it’s not comparable after all, since we don’t know where we stand with Hot Carl.

Speaking of traffic, on my walk the other day I saw a man on a motorcycle wearing a mascot head in the shape of the Easter bunny. I wish I had the wherewithal to take a photo but to be honest, I was too stunned. I hope he had a helmet on underneath.

Mom? Mom? Was that a giant rabbit?

Weekly Reading

Girl, Woman, Other. This book blew me away; it is a work of art. I love women’s stories and I love short stories, and this really delivered. Each of twelve chapters is the life story of a different woman, and all of those short stories are interconnected in some way. The women are Black and British, and all their stories are unique and yet universal. It’s incredible to me how a good short story writer can convey so much with such an economical use of words. The writing style of this book is powerful and moving and adds to the emotionality of the experience. Loved it!

Tiger Eyes. My reread of Judy Blume continues with this, which was absolutely not a favourite of mine as a youth, but it’s a really fascinating read as an adult in 2025. The premise is very sad; a teen girl’s father is shot to death in his corner store, and her family transplants to New Mexico to be with relatives during the aftermath. The town in New Mexico is Los Alamos which is famous for being the place in which the atomic bomb was developed, and which itself was populated by physicists who research that and other weaponry. It’s a wild setting for a YA story, particularly one that was published in 1981 during the Cold War. This completely went over my head when I read it around age 11, as did the themes of grief, loss, and depression. Blume is such a master of weaving such heavy topics with those of sex, alcohol use, and family troubles, topics of deep interest to young readers. It was great on the reread, and there is quite a bit about Oppenheimer and American foreign policy, as well as changing ideas about Native Americans. There is still a bit of dated language which is unsavoury for the current climate, but it would have been still ahead of its time.

Bite By Bite. My friend Laura (HI LAURA) has never steered me wrong yet. She said this was her favourite food memoir, and the words “food” and “memoir” perked up my ears. Wow, was this a joy to read. Every chapter focuses on a different food – the majority are fruits, many exotic fruits, but she also waxes poetic about foods as varied as black pepper, gyro, waffles, shave ice, and lumpia. This book focuses on the joy of eating and how foods build community and celebration, and it is truly a delight. Talk about leaving toxic diet culture behind – this just made me want to celebrate the many delicious flavours in this world. Now, did an essay about pawpaw – a fruit I have never seen, let alone tried – bring me to tears? It sure did.

On the topic of joy and food: the grapes have all been pruned and tied and are ready for spring. Please enjoy Rex enjoying the prunings! Happy April, friends. xo

Cold, Cold, Cold, Warmer, HOT

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Cold As Ice

We are in the midst of a cold snap around here, but I use that term very loosely. It’s more “cold” than COLD, or even Cold, but still, it’s the most winter we’ve had all year. I took the opportunity to look out my snow pants and heated mittens, and I’m winning all the style awards on our daily walks. It’s honestly a bit of overkill for these cold-but-not-COLD temperatures, and by the end of our walk I’m a little sweaty.

My creativity has taken a huge hit this week; I have been unable to write anything that I would want anyone to read. Someone suggested it’s the weather, but I think it’s directly related to the torrential volume of grim and terrifying news. I have broken my own rules for news and media consumption, and have succumbed more than once to doomscrolling, leading to higher than normal screen time and a feeling of complete emotional depletion. But we are in a fresh new week, the perfect time for a fresh new start; I am re-implementing my boundaries and refreshing my Nolite te Bastardes Carborundorum attitude.

Cold Hearted Snake

We are also in a fresh new lunar year, and I recently learned about Ben Ming Nian, which is when it is the year of your own Chinese zodiac sign. I would have thought that this would be a very lucky thing, but it turns out it is not; the superstition is that people in their zodiac year are offending the God of Age, Tai Sui, and will therefore have a year of challenges and bad luck. My husband is a Snake, and so I guess he will have to watch out – although, according to the Chinese zodiac, the Snake is the second-luckiest sign, and so it might all just work out evenly.

As an aside, the first-luckiest sign is that of the Dragon, and apparently there is a mini baby boom in China during that zodiac year. It reminded me of when I was in prenatal class and I learned that there was a mini baby boom every November due to Valentines-related sexytimes, and, in Calgary specifically, one in late March/ early April. The latter correlated to wild Calgary Stampede-related sex which – and I’m sorry, because I know my mom and possibly Aunty C are reading this – was the case for my firstborn. My second born was in September, which, well, you can do the math. Let’s just call it a visit from Santa. Interestingly enough, the divorce rate also spiked after Stampede, for different, but related, reasons.

But back to the subject at hand. After learning about Ben Ming Nian, I looked up the Year of the Rabbit, which is my sign. The last one was 2023, which was indeed a year of great challenge for me! The others were 2011, 1999, and 1987, and I definitely remember challenges in all those years. Of course, I’m also a person who related completely to a story about an ill woman who got magically better after taking placebos, even AFTER she was told they were placebos. The placebo effect is my entire personality some days.

Recently Suzanne (HI SUZANNE) asked how do you feel about astrology and horoscopes? I have never really connected with the Chinese zodiac, and I think horoscopes, as seen in the newspapers or women’s weekly magazines, are silly and irrelevant, but I have always strongly believed in astrological signs and the zodiac. I would have been great in the 70s dating scene. As soon as I know someone’s birthday I feel like I know all about them. Oh, I’ll say sagely, You’re a Pisces. Oh, that makes so much sense. I’m not saying I wouldn’t have married my husband if his sign was incompatible with mine, but I’m not NOT saying that, either. More likely we would have never dated, had he not been a compatible sign, because yes, I am that person. Listen, a Taurus wants what a Taurus wants, and I am not going to waste my time with someone who does not appreciate my bull-like personality and love of luxury.

This Leaves Me Cold

Speaking of sexy compatibility, I was so excited to see that Bad on Paper released their annual Obscure Erotica episode in honour of Valentines’ Day. Some of you may remember that this podcast introduced me to the wild world of weird erotica, featuring everything from Clippy, of Microsoft Office fame, to the ghost of Abraham Lincoln. I personally have read about sex with Santa Claus, balloon animals, and a sentient door. So I was interested to hear what had been chosen on the podcast, and I will tell you right now: no. NO. No no no, things have officially gone too far in the obscure erotica world.

One of the featured books was called The Devilled Egg Made Me Do It, which, predictably, explored sex with a giant sentient egg. This egg, named Damien – he’s devilled, after all – has horns, chive-like body hair, and a tail that is actually anal beads. Just the words “anal” and “beads” together make me immediately and inadvertently Kegel. To say that I was disturbed even listening to this discussion would be a vast understatement. I was amused that the protagonist’s name was Shelly, but not amused enough to read this book.

The other host, though. I feel disappointed in her beyond all imagining. The book she chose was called Garden Gnome Sex Party and I need not say more. IS NOTHING SACRED? There were hats involved, that’s all I’m going to say. This was obviously upsetting to a gnome aficionado like myself, although it did remind me of a very funny Gravity Falls episode, in which everyone thinks Mabel’s boyfriend is a vampire, and it turns out he is just a tall pile of gnomes with a costume over top.

Since these writers utilize pseudonyms, they could be amongst us right now. I’m just going to say it: if I hear anything, ANYTHING, about my beloved Salvadore and friends being written about in an untoward way, there will be hell to pay.

Warming My Heart

Let’s shift gears from (very weird) Valentines to Galentines! The squad came over, plus a few new ladies, and it was so much fun. I am so grateful to be around such a fabulous group of women.

Elisabeth (HI ELISABETH) has been encouraging everyone to find joy in gratitude this month (FIG!) but honestly, I need no encouragement. I’m HERE for the gratitude fest, is what I’m saying, and right now I am so very grateful that I have this wonderful group of friends. I’ve lived here for just over a year and a half now, and I will never not feel incredibly lucky that I have the Golden Gals Squad surrounding me. I’m also grateful for Canadian rose from my favourite Vineland Estates, and for chocolate.

I’m also grateful for cold and wintry Saturday afternoons and that Engie’s Cool Blogger’s Book Club (HI ENGIE) chose The Blue Castle, by one of my favourite childhood authors.

Weekly Reading

What else have I been reading, other than The Blue Castle? Well, I am proud to say that I DNFed a book I was not enjoying: Stanley Tucci’s Taste, which is a memoir through food. There was just too much meat and seafood descriptions, so I abandoned ship. Fortunately I had some good books this week:

The Husbands. This was such a fun and original book; it’s the story of a woman who comes home after a night with friends to discover that not only is she married, but she has been for years. After her husband goes up to the attic to fetch something, a different husband comes down. And so it goes, every time a husband goes to the attic a new one is in her life, and her life itself is new. It was an absolute delight to read this; I’m not usually one to enjoy magic or alternate universes, but this one was so fun and the ending was perfection. Big thanks to Suzanne and Lisa (HI SUZANNE HI LISA) who assured non-magic-loving me that I would love this, despite the premise. I did!

Summer Fridays. I was 24 in 1999, which is the same as our protagonist in this book – don’t you love when that happens? This lovely, fun, nostalgic book takes place in a hot New York City summer, and there are so many city-related details. A friendship is started between a young woman and her fiance’s (very close) colleague’s boyfriend (did you get that? I had to think for a minute). That friendship turns to something else, but this is not just a straightforward love story because, well, she’s engaged. I really enjoyed this book, it was a perfect read for this little cold snap we are having. It’s light, full of fun nostalgic details (“you’ve got mail!”) and startlingly sensitive for a book that’s essentially about infidelity. Thanks AGAIN to Lisa for the recommendation, is this the Lisa Show, maybe it is! (HI LISA)

No One Can Pronounce My Name. I expected to enjoy this book about the immigrant experience, queerness, friendship, and finding your people in the unlikeliest of places, but I did not. I should have DNFed! You win some, you lose some.

On our walk on Saturday, Rex and I came across a couple of mating raccoons. It was extremely disturbing, to say the least, as Rex barked and barked at what he must have assumed was a two-headed animal, while the male raccoon made eye contact with me as he humped away. I guess love is in the air in the animal kingdom too. I hope you have a week filled with chocolates, hearts, rose, and no wild animal sex shows. Unless you like that, in which case, who am I to judge? xo