Category Archives: Playtime

Full-On Festive; Eighty-Nine Weeks In

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It’s up! It’s up! The tree is up!

I was visiting with a friend (HI MARION) last Thursday and I mentioned how excited I was to put up the tree that evening. “It is so LATE to be putting the tree up,” I said, as she cocked her head and looked at me. I mean, it was November 25. It FELT late.

We don’t normally put up the tree on a weeknight – I’m generally nearly comatose in the evenings – but my husband has been busy, busy, busy at work, in a “working all weekend” kind of way, and the boys inexplicably had Friday off, and so we put on our new Christmas sweaters and carped the diem.

During the summer, WWE Christmas sweaters were on clearance, and the three guys each got one, along with a snowman Roman Reigns – if you know, you know, and also I SEE YOU – and I initially rejected the idea of getting a Christmas sweater for myself. Then, I started to feel left out, but by that time the only women’s sweater left on clearance was not in my size, but no matter. I am now the Legit Boss. Again, if you know, you know.

Welcome to our tree, Roman Reigns in snowman form.

Bye, Buddy! Hope you find your dad!

I feel like we could make a Bob Ross/ Iceman comparison here. Both make no mistakes.

Our tree and decorations are – clearly – not of designer quality, but everything has a story associated with it and I love them all so much. Decorating for Christmas is one of my favourite things about the entire year; it’s definitely a family affair filled with excitement, discussion about ornaments, and general chaos.

I had a few people express surprise that my kids still enjoy this activity, and then I wondered if maybe they participated out of a feeling of obligation to their mother. I asked them separately, and they both said that it was one of their favourite Whole Family Activities of the year, which was extremely gratifying to hear.

Over a period of weeks, my husband has been working on the outdoor decorations, and they too are finished!

He also has set up the lights over the garage – which I view from the kitchen – to go on at 5:00 am, which is right when I start my yoga practice and it makes me so happy to see them.

What I’m saying is that Tiny Secret Festive Season has morphed into Full-On Festive Season.

I needed this Festive Feeling because it’s been a week, my goodness you guys. A WEEK. We’ve had some globally bad news, some personally bad news, some really sad extended-family related news, and, on a much lighter note, some personal stress from having a teenage driver.

Parents of teen drivers: do you ever get to a point where you don’t feel at least low-level anxiety when they take the car out? My friend Jen (HI JEN) said she still does even though her teen has his own car and has driven to school daily for over a year. My son does not have his own car; he drives my minivan, which is its own source of stress. On Friday, their day off of school, he drove six (SIX) of his friends to what was supposed to be an afternoon of laser tag, but because of a booking mixup that fell through. He put EIGHTY KILOMETRES on my car, driving around, until they finally ended up at Denny’s. Denny’s! It reminded me of that old comedy routine from the 80s: No one ever GOES to Denny’s. You will probably END UP at Denny’s, but no one ever says “Let’s go to Denny’s.” Truth. Well, he’s a good driver, very calm and competent, but I was feeling low-level stressed-out until he was home. The low-level stress continued when he told me one of the destinations was downtown, and the parking situation was difficult, and a right-hand turn onto a one-way street was hard with all the traffic, and you know what, my palms are getting sweaty just thinking about it.

I have to remind myself that when I was 17, I was driving all around all the time, and my parents had no idea where I was at any given time, and no way to get a hold of me. Imagine, you guys! Imagine the stress! Hoo boy. I cannot. At least these days, we can stalk our teens with various phone apps, but of course, that can lead to confusion too. Like when you think that the kids are going to laser tag over by the airport and then you see that they are actually downtown and then, weirdly, at Denny’s.

Pandemic Reading

Who Is Maud Dixon. First of all, many thanks to Suzanne (HI SUZANNE) for this recommendation. I don’t think I would have picked it up without her rave review, and that would have been awful – I enjoyed this so very much! Florence thinks she’s landed a dream job, assisting the woman who writes under the pseudonym Maud Dixon. They travel to Morocco for research, and a terrible accident ensues. Florence wonders if she can just…take over as Maud and realize her dream of becoming a famous writer. There were so many twists and turns in this book, what a great read!

Intuitive Eating. This was another recommendation, this time by my friend Anna (HI ANNA). Anna and I are book twins and she spoke so highly of this book. I felt kind of weary and reluctant to read yet another book about diet culture, but, book twins! So I picked it up and I was glad I did. This is absolutely NOT a weight-loss book or a book about how to change your body shape or size. This is a book about respecting your body, loving yourself EXACTLY AS YOU ARE, treating yourself with kindness and compassion, and rejecting the diet culture that is so pervasive in our world.

An interesting note, and one I have seen in a few books lately, is that all the latest research indicates that diets, in 95% of cases, lead to weight GAIN, not loss, and that weight cycling from dieting is associated with far worse health outcomes than wearing extra pounds. That, to me, is kind of mind-blowing. Also, when diets fail – which, again, due to research about what our bodies need and how they cope, is almost always – we tend to put the blame on ourselves, rather than the diets. The analogy used in this book is that if there was a new medication for asthma that gave us excellent results for two weeks, and then much worse breathing and also other health issues for the rest of our lives, we would not blame ourselves. We would say it’s the fault of the medication.

Anyway, it’s very interesting, and also references the famous Minnesota Starvation Experiment, which I know that I’ve referenced before as having parallels to early pandemic empty shelves and our subsequent obsession with having enough flour, toilet paper, and every other thing that was hard to get early in the pandemic. One of the most interesting things from the Minnesota Starvation Experiment is that some of the men were obsessed with food and getting enough to eat well after the experiment was over, some for their entire lives.

All of which is to say this book provided a lot of food for thought, and I didn’t even want to read it! I’m glad I did.

Such A Quiet Place. When a quiet neighbourhood is rocked by a double murder, the residents band together to incarcerate the main suspect. But when the suspect is exonerated and returns to the neighbourhood, things go off the rails. Who can you trust? This was an exciting read.

I hope you all have a great week! We are going into December already, what even! xo

Thirst Traps and Letting Go; Eighty-Eight Weeks In

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These Pretzels Are Making Me Thirsty

I love listening to podcasts while doing menial household drudgery or slowly walking Barkley around the neighbourhood; it makes me actually look forward to doing dull things like folding the laundry or other mind-numbing tasks. I feel like I learn new things every day; I discovered the “We Didn’t Start The Fire” podcast, which goes through every single lyric in the Billy Joel song, with different expert guests for each topic. I am only at Sugar Ray, so I have many more episodes to go, but I’m learning so much.

Small note for anyone who wants to look up that podcast: they have the absolute WORST theme song, it is We Didn’t Start The Fire played on the kazoo. The kazoo! I will never understand some artistic choices. If you can get past the kazoo, the podcast itself is very enlightening.

On Stephany’s recommendation (HI STEPHANY), I started listening to You Can Sit With Us, which is not at all enlightening, but is just some younger women chatting about their lives in a mindlessly soothing way. Well, it’s not totally un-enlightening, because this week I learned about Thirst Traps.

I have a number of younger women on my Instagram feed, and so I had seen Thirst Traps without knowing there was an actual name for it. I just thought they were Sexy Photos That People Post On Instagram To Get Attention, Not That I’m Judging, but Thirst Traps is much more succinct.

At the dinner table, I told the boys that I learned what a Thirst Trap is, and their reaction was pure horror. “Oh, GOD.” my older son said. “How did you learn about that? Did one of your friends tell you? ARE YOUR FRIENDS POSTING THIRST TRAPS.” My younger son, apparently too anguished to speak, merely bowed his head, with his forehead in his hand, pained at the thought. I assured him that neither myself nor my friends were posting Thirst Traps, but that I heard it on a podcast, to which they responded with “WHAT PODCAST, WHAT HAPPENED TO THE FUCKBOIS OF LITERATURE?”

To be honest, I haven’t been listening to the Fuckbois; it is such a great concept but the execution is…not.

Anyway, there will be no Thirst Traps from me – for one thing, just no, but for another, my sons and a number of their friends inexplicably follow me on Instagram. My feed is almost entirely books, with some baked goods, a landscape, and an occasional selfie thrown in for good measure, so I’m not sure why any teenager would be interested in it, but in any case, No Thirst Traps For Nicole. The mental anguish of my children would be too much.

Let It Go, Let It Go

It has been a very productive week; I was completely inspired and motivated by my dear friend Allison (HI ALLISON) to tackle some shelves in our storage room/ pantry and purge items no longer needed. I did this years ago, when Kondo-ing everything in the house, but you know, I think as the children grow up I need to revisit my storage areas more regularly. No one has used Lego in years, not to mention the adorable Playmobil pet clinic. I gave those things to the little girls across the street, and put a number of things on my local Buy Nothing page.

What is it about purging our stuff that feels so great? I feel a Mary Oliver poem coming on:

It’s not like I want to burn or trash all my things – so wasteful, Mary! – or keep NOTHING, I do love my stuff, even as I let things go. One thing I haven’t been able to get rid of yet is a set of alphabet and farm animal fridge magnets. I know! It’s time. Just…not yet. I was silently judging my husband for not letting me get rid of his underwater camera that he took travelling when he was in his twenties, thirty years ago. I mean, it takes film. Film! We aren’t going to use it. But he’s sentimentally attached to it, just like I’m sentimentally attached to a box of fridge magnets, and I have a stainless steel fridge.

I Am Santa, Baby

My holiday cards and the photo calendars that I order for the grandparents every year arrived this week, which meant that I was able to package up and mail the parcel I send to my mother-and-sister-in-law. This is one of those jobs that feels like it should take, at the most, half an hour, but always ends up taking up an entire afternoon.

I have at times felt resentful that somehow the job of purchasing, wrapping, and mailing gifts to my husband’s family has fallen to me, but I remind myself that a) there are many, many jobs around the house that my husband does automatically, that don’t even occur to me to TRY to do, and b) our parcel makes up over half of their Christmas gifts, and so I would feel terrible if I didn’t send them. It’s unacceptable to me to think of my mother-in-law, all by herself on Christmas morning, with nothing to open. Also, choosing a gift for my nearly-eighty-year-old mother-in-law is not really in my husband’s wheelhouse, but it is in mine, so here we are.

Anyway, I had a few parcels to mail, and since it was November 16, I felt that the post office would be a quick in-and-out, and was I ever wrong. In fact, I am not sure I could have been MORE wrong. There were at least fifteen people in the lineup that snaked down the aisle, and only one person working at Canada Post. Forty minutes later, I collapsed into my car, exhausted. Note to everyone reading this: if you need to mail anything, go now, or just assume you’re going to need to schedule an hour for this errand and maybe take a book. Actually, even if you do go now, take a book.

Pandemic Reading

Speaking of books!

The Thursday Murder Club. I don’t often read mysteries, but I enjoyed this book about a quartet of septuagenarians who meet on Thursdays to discuss unsolved murders. The developer for their retirement community is found dead under mysterious circumstances, and so they are on the case! It’s nice to read a book about older people who are thriving and enjoying life; this isn’t a thing that happens much in literature. There was a line about how they used to get up early because there was so much to do – work, family, etc. – and now they still get up early because who knows how much time they have left, and they want to make the most of it. I liked that a lot.

Even So. Hmm. Okay. So. The first two-thirds of this book was really great; in fact, I thought “this is the story I’ve always wanted to write.” It read like a thriller; very fast-paced and action-packed, about a very well-off woman who has a seemingly beautiful life but blows it up by having an affair. It’s REALLY good. But then, it takes a turn and becomes a religious allegory. The last third of the book is all about redemption and forgiveness and is very heavy on Catholic imagery and beliefs. Essentially, it IS an allegory, with themes of sin, lust, greed, followed by guilt, redemption, and forgiveness. I wish I had known that going in. It felt like a book I might have read when I was in confirmation class at age 14. It’s almost like the author wanted to hammer her faith into the reader’s head; it’s pretty over-the-top. Unless you want a lesson in Catholicism or God’s plan for your life, I would pass on this book.

Consent. I have read many, many books in my life, but none so abjectly horrifying, shocking, and disturbing as this. This is a memoir written by a woman who entered into a relationship with Gabriel Matzneff, who was an acclaimed writer who wrote about pedophilia, RAPING CHILDREN and having sex with young girls and boys. Did you hear that? He won awards for his work. The author entered into this relationship when she was 13 and he was 49, and all the adults in her life, including her own mother, were complicit. It is absolutely unbelievably shocking. A fourteen year old girl, who essentially is living in a hotel with a fifty year old man, skips school constantly and no one does anything at all. When she leaves him at age 15, because he had taken up with a younger girl, her own mother says “are you sure? He loves you so much” which, what. This woman is only three years older than I am, and this took place in the 1980s. The 1980s! So many adults saw this relationship, knew about this relationship, and shrugged it off because Matzneff was, apparently, a literary giant. This man wrote about sex tourism in the Philippines, where he would buy 11 and 12 year-old boys for his own sexual pleasure. He wrote about all his young conquests, including the author of this book, and people bought those books and applauded him, awarding him literary honours. How did this happen? This is just such a disturbing book and if you have daughters, maybe take a pass.

On that note…time to sign off. Have a beautiful week, everyone! xo

Nicole’s Favourite Things: The November Beauties Edition

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I know many people loathe the month of November, but I do not. It’s generally a grey/ brown, chilly, windy month, true, but it has its own kind of beauty:

We don’t all have to be flashy to be beautiful.

November is also a good month for me because the first three weeks are the Exciting Lead Up To The Festive Season, followed by Fully Festive Season. We are IN IT.

But it’s not just about festivities around here, some of my favourite things this month have nothing at all to do with the festive season, I am a woman of many layers and facets. Some things I just love because I love them, and who knows, maybe you’ll love them too.

Nicole’s Favourite Things: The November Beauties Edition

Mary Oliver and Rupi Kaur

Bear with me for a moment, as I know that this will sound Incredibly Pretentious. Every day since the pandemic began, I read a poem prior to my yoga practice (I know, I’m sorry) and then as I practice, I contemplate what I’ve read. All through 2020 I read my very favourite poet, Mary Oliver, and then on the advice of a friend, I decided to add the poetry of Rumi into the mix. I obtained a copy of A Year With Rumi, which, as you may guess from the title, has a poem for every day of the year.

People, I am going to say something controversial: A Year With Rumi is just too much Rumi. I feel like I could have happily had A Week With Rumi. Maybe Ten Days With Rumi. I have been reading the daily selection of this collection every single day, every single DAY, PEOPLE, and really only a handful of poems have resonated with me. I know. I’m sorry!

I am the kind of person who Sticks With Something, and the thought of not finishing the book when it’s November, and I’ve been doing this since New Year’s Day, well. But then I saw this poem by Rupi Kaur on Instagram, of all places:

And, oh, my, did that resonate. I then remembered that I have a Rupi Kaur collection, entitled Home Body, that contains THAT EXACT POEM, but I was saving it until after I finished the Rumi collection. This, I thought to myself, is stupid. If I died tomorrow, would I be happy that I spent eleven and a half months reading Rumi poetry on the daily, while NOT reading Rupi Kaur poetry, just because there is a Rumi poem ascribed to each day of the year? Would I? NO, I WOULD NOT. So while I will continue reading my Rumi-poem-a-day (must finish, must finish), I will do it later in the day, and instead will alternate Mary Oliver and Rupi Kaur for my pre-practice poetry. Life is too short to spend reading poetry that I am not enjoying.

It will be interesting, co-reading these two poets: both brilliant women, one young and one who has, like Elvis, left the building. One writes largely about the world within herself, the other writes largely about the world without, the big, beautiful, natural world. I came across this poem from my Mary Oliver collection, Devotions:

It took my breath away, and is also a good reminder that we don’t know what’s going on in other people’s lives, and to live as kindly and open heartedly as possible.

White Chocolate Peppermint Popcorn

Now for something completely different! My love for Boom Chicka Pop is well-documented, so imagine my excitement when I saw this at Superstore:

White Chocolate Peppermint Popcorn! I immediately grabbed a bag, and my son and I snacked on it during our recent Top Gun viewing. We both agreed that the first bite was weird; the texture is kind of strange and unexpected, but by the second bite we were completely addicted.

Yesterday I was at Superstore and not only did I grab the very last bag of this, but I also picked up a dark chocolate drizzle with sea salt and I shall report back.

This Silly Crop Top

I have had this Flashdance-style cropped sweatshirt for probably ten years, and I love it as a cute layer to wear to the gym. I have never once worn it without something longer underneath, because my midriff-baring ship has sailed, long ago.

There’s a lot of buzz around sustainable clothing lately, and what could be more sustainable than a decade-old top? I was chatting with a friend about this, that I have had flak for buying fairly pricey yoga/ workout clothes from lululemon, but those items have served me so well. I have pants dating back to 2009 that still look great, and numerous tops and tanks that are about to celebrate their tenth birthday, this crop top being among them.

My favourite thing about wearing this sweatshirt is saying to my kids, “Hey guys, look, I’m wearing a crop top! I’m not a regular mom, I’m a cool mom! How do you do, fellow kids?” at which point they give me that polite, yet weary, chuckle of the type you might have when asked if you are working hard or hardly working, or why didn’t you get them all cut, when you mention that you got a haircut.

The Charlie Brown Christmas Sheet Music

I love, love, LOVE the soundtrack to The Charlie Brown Christmas, even though I cannot and will not watch the show anymore. Honestly, that show is really terrible. Everyone is so mean, Charlie Brown is literally bullied and excluded constantly, and the cruelty of children and how it was completely normalized makes me want to set something on fire. I do, however, love Linus’ line “I never thought it was such a bad little tree, it just needs a little love.” Preach, Linus.

But the music, you guys, the music is so wonderful. And also, really difficult to play on the piano. I trained in the Royal Conservatory tradition, and so I consider myself to be a “classical” rather than a “jazzy” pianist. I have been struggling with this songbook for the better part of three years, but one of my yoga students is an actual piano teacher, and she gave me some really great tips on how to play “swing” style. It helped so much and now I feel like I’m actually making music, rather than randomly hitting notes like a chicken pecking at a keyboard.

The key to playing swing-style, according to my student, who is in her sixties, is to behave as if I’ve smoked a big doobie, and just relax, man, and go with it. She also told me to envision the bassline as “one of those guys plucking the strings on a giant bass, wearing a beret and nodding along” and honestly, that kind of visualization was really helpful.

Florence’s Art

I have been friends with Florence (HI FLORENCE) since 2009, when we were both Kindergarten Moms. I always knew she was artistically gifted – she can sew, and craft, and has a great eye for colour and style – and this year she started painting. She painted this for me and it’s one of my very favourite things:

I love it for so many reasons: she painted it especially for me, for one, but she also based it off of a photograph I had taken on a Sunday morning walk with my husband. I snapped a photo of a train going by, nostalgically thinking of the days that the boys would be excited by trains. To my surprise, Florence copied that photo and gifted it to me, and it hangs on my kitchen wall so I can look at it daily and feel the love.

Florence, along with many other artists, will be at the Under 100 Art Show in December, and I am so excited. I mean, how often do you go to an art show that features your friend? This has never happened for me before, and I can’t wait. Tickets are still available, so if you’re in the YYC area, go and get some! They are very affordable and every piece is priced under $100, so perhaps a good time to go Christmas shopping?

Poetry, art, and music, popcorn and crop tops, I am indeed a multifaceted woman with many different loves and favourites. What are you loving, in this month of November? Tell me everything. xo

And You, Asshole, You’re Lucky To Be Here; Eighty-Seven Weeks In

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Every few weeks for the past couple of months, my husband has been travelling to check on the progress of the enormous renovation of our vacation home, and to meet with all the various contractors and so forth. Last week the boys had two days off of school, and so my older son accompanied him on his latest trip, leaving me and my younger son at home with Barkley.

This might seem like an ordinary thing in your house, but believe me, such a thing has never happened before. Other than one or two school-related trips, the boys have never been apart, and I have to say that it was really lovely to spend some one-on-one time with my younger son. Other than an hour or so here and there, I have never actually had true, extended, one-on-one time with either child since my youngest was born, and he just turned sixteen. We had such a fun couple of days together, both doing our own things and also doing things together. In total we had two nights where it was just the two of us, so we each chose a special meal for dinner, and we both ended up choosing Middle Eastern-style food. He chose homemade shawarma and falafel, and I chose TAKEOUT. This may also seem like an ordinary thing in your house, but believe me, it is not in mine.

I think the last time we got takeout was for my birthday in April, unless you count the time in early August, when we had just returned home late in the evening from our road trip, and my husband dashed out to A&W because we had no food in the house. I like a Beyond Meat burger just fine, but it doesn’t feel like a treat or a joyful gustatory pleasure, which is my goal for most dinners, truly. My son and I talked for WEEKS about what we would order and I had been thinking about the takeout place for MONTHS and you might think, from that statement, that maybe I should get out more and actually order takeout more frequently, and you might be right. If I did that, though, it would be less of an event.

God, this was so good. I got “The Mouh,” an eggplant/ zucchini sandwich, along with the dip sampler which included eggplant-based dips, and it wasn’t until after I had talked to my son about how much I love eggplant and I wish I had eggplant more often, that I realized what I was saying in terms of teen speak, and that he was just silently nodding and probably dying inside. That felt a bit awkward.

Eggplant aside, we also watched Top Gun together, which, as many of you know, is one of my favourite movies of all time. It reminded me of the collaborative blog my friends Hannah and Allison and I wrote, so long ago (HI ALLISON HI HANNAH). My favourite post from that blog was Life Lessons From Top Gun, and I just realized that I wrote that OVER SIX YEARS AGO, where does the time go. God, I love that movie. My son and I spent a lot of time making the hand gestures utilized by the ground crew (three, two, one, salute), and randomly quoting dialogue. Negative, Ghostrider, the pattern is full. He’s cold as ice, no mistakes. Talk to me, Goose. Bullshit, you can be mine. And you, asshole, you’re lucky to be here. Good times, and, as always, a good reminder that we are all lucky to be here.

I know it seems off-brand for me to really love Top Gun, but I do. I smile through the whole thing, from the first “bong, bong” sounds to the final Danger Zone credits. Several months ago I ponied up $1.99 to change the ringtone on my phone to the Top Gun Anthem, but somehow I cannot change the volume, which is Extremely High At All Times. Well, it means I never miss a call when my phone is in my bag, although I have had some odd looks from people around me when it starts blasting. Doo doo doo dodododododo.

Now it’s past Remembrance Day, which means that I started breaking out the Christmas mugs for my morning coffee, and putting out the Christmas-themed tea towels. I have been using my Christmas notepad for groceries, wearing my Christmas bracelet, using Vanilla Candy Cane-scented foot cream, and everyone has been washing with festive-themed soap since the beginning of the month. The weather forecast is fairly decent so I am hoping that my husband will start the outdoor decorations, and if you thought our Halloween display was fun, just you wait. All I’m going to say is that we have a few new additions this year that I’m dying to show you.

I always buy the kids nice Lindor Advent calendars, and I always think it would be nice to have my own, non-chocolate one. There are so many lovely calendars out there – the Body Shop has a gorgeous one – but I really cannot bring myself to a) spend upwards of $75 and b) spend upwards of $75 for a bunch of STUFF when I am trying to have less STUFF. I like the idea of consumable daily things, but I didn’t want a candy-related one, and then I saw Swistle (HI SWISTLE) link to a tea advent calendar that was, unlike many tea advent calendars, extremely reasonably priced. This calendar featured Pukka tea, which is my very favourite, and upon investigation, I discovered it was all sold out in Canada. Womp womp. I ordered another tea calendar that was reasonably priced – $20 – and it has arrived and I am disappointed. Over half the teas are green and black teas, which I do not, as a rule, enjoy, as I’m strictly an herbal tea kind of girl.

Well, I shall try to be open minded. Maybe they will be the most delicious thing ever. Maybe I will start drinking black and green tea instead of my usual ten cups of coffee in the morning. I cannot see it happening, but as I say to the kids, it’s good to try new things, you just never know.

Pandemic Reading

Malibu Rising. Have you ever read a book and thought, this would be a blockbuster movie? That was my feeling as I read it, that this would make a really good movie. Wait – is it optioned for a movie? I am always the last to find out about it. Anyway, this is a highly entertaining, don’t-overthink-this kind of book that was fun to read: four siblings who have gained fame and fortune through surfing throw an annual party. There are secrets! And Old Hollywood-style themes! It’s set in the early 80s, and the clothing and hair details are very fun, for those of us who really remember that era.

One, Two, Three. This was a really interesting read: an environmental disaster precipitated by a chemical manufacturer has devastating effects on a town and its citizens. This is a story about the search for justice, but also a coming-of-age story featuring teen triplets, told from each girl’s point of view. Very well-written and more complex than meets the eye.

I hope you all have a wonderful week; happy halfway-through-November! xo

Festivities Shift; Eighty-Five Weeks In

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Hello November!!

It was a brisk, wintry start to the weekend, so I wasn’t sure if we would even get any Trick-or-Treaters, but we ended up with an all-time high of 43, smashing our earlier record of 25. Maybe it was the decorations!

We do have some candy left over, which some of us are happier about than others.

Speaking of sugar, all occasions must be marked by sugar cookies, it is a law, while you’re living under my roof, you will obey my rules!

The first of November is, as you know, the beginning of Tiny Secret Festive Season! Today I’ll wear my Christmas bracelet, which will be with me until the New Year, and I will swap out the hand soaps for festive-themed ones. Tonight will be the night for red-plaid festive pajamas, my nightly foot cream will be swapped out for the Vanilla Candy Cane scent, I’ll start using my Christmas bookmarks, and my grocery lists will all be written on gingerbread-themed notepads. In a couple of weeks, I’ll start using the Christmas tea towels and Buddy the Elf mugs, and by then it will be soon time to decorate totally, so that by the end of the month we will be fully into the festive swing of things.

And on that note, I am ALMOST done my Christmas shopping, you guys! I know! Even for me, it’s early. Last week I carved out an afternoon just for going to the mall. I remembered what shopping felt like last year, and what it felt like was not fun. I recalled just trying to get every gift necessary in my one trip to the mall, and ending up completely exhausted and sour. You know what, I don’t want to live my life like that anymore. I don’t want to think of shopping for gifts for my loved ones, for my favourite holiday, as a huge dreaded chore. BE THE CHANGE, I thought, and so I changed my attitude about it.

One thing about me is that Gift Giving is not really my predominant Love Language (it’s Acts of Service). I have a tendency to get stressed and nervous when buying gifts – what if they don’t like it, what if it’s the wrong thing – and I think that is not the right way to think about Christmas gifts. Gifts are GIFTS. I don’t really remember being super-specific with wish lists when I was a kid. I remember being excited and happy opening gifts, and even when they weren’t things I would have specifically chosen, I would be delighted. I am still that way now. So why, I wondered, was I becoming stressed about getting the exact right thing for the exact right person? It’s a GIFT.

So that was the mindset I was trying to cultivate, and anyone with teen boys or other people who are difficult to buy for, people who have everything and want for nothing, will know what I mean.

The second part of my mindset was that I don’t need to get every single thing in one fell swoop. Last year, I kind of did; everything was new in terms of masks and customer limits in the store and sanitization stations everywhere. We still have our indoor mask mandate here, and almost no one walks around with a mask under their noses anymore. There are still limits to customers and hand sanitizers when one enters a store, but it feels pretty normal and much less dystopian now.

Old habits die hard, and I was tempted to buy the first thing I saw and to speed walk through the mall, but I told myself to slow down. It’s October 26, I said to myself, You can come back next week. Or later! I really tried to just enjoy the shopping experience, and as they say, fake it until you make it. And it worked! I really enjoyed myself. I browsed through a few stores, making mental notes about some items I thought would suit some of my giftees, I spent a LOT of time in Indigo choosing a paper agenda for 2022 for MYSELF, while looking at their displays of silly and delightful little things suitable for stockings, and, after lapping the mall once, I went back to the stores and bought the items that had initially caught my eye. I had a few ideas for my husband but at that point I was pretty laden down with bags. I think I’ll go back tomorrow and buy them, and maybe spend another enjoyable afternoon browsing around.

Pandemic Reading

Seven Days In June. This was an interesting mix of light, fun, sexy romance, and a commentary on the devastating personal toll of social issues. The plot follows two writers who had a (kind of) romantic week together fifteen years prior, and who have been writing the character of the other person into their books ever since. Sounds lovely and light, but that romantic week included massive drug use, self-mutilation, and eventual overdose. So…not as light as one might think.

What We Don’t Talk About When We Talk About Fat. I listen to and enjoy Aubrey Gordon’s podcast Maintenance Phase, which is about the toxicity of the “wellness” industry. The theme of this book is that anti-fat bias is the last “socially acceptable” mode of discrimination; it details the kind of discrimination faced, interspersed with truly horrifying stories about the way people treat other people. It also discusses the value we as a society place on certain body types, and how we assign morality to bodies and foods. It is something I had been thinking about for a while: a few summers ago, a friend was sharing with me her struggle to lose weight, and several times she used the words “good” and “bad” to describe herself and the food that she ate. I haven’t been bad at all! It bothered me then and it bothers me now, and I am still having a hard time articulating why. Anyway, this book is well-written, well-researched, informative and thought-provoking.

Happy November to you all! Have a great week! Is anyone else starting to gear up for the holiday season, or is it just me? xo

Never Eat Shredded Wheat; Eighty-Three Weeks In

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In my mind, one of the greatest technological advancements is the advent of the map function on my phone. I am a person who has very little sense of direction, and before this incredible feat of technological engineering, I would write down or print out directions to a place, and panic every time I thought I might have to turn, trying to keep one eye on the road and the other on the piece of paper. Is this the turn? I can’t read that sign. Oh goddammit, that’s a crescent, not a drive. WHERE AM I. The kids have known from a young age that I am a stressy driver in certain parts of the city, and my husband is constantly amazed that someone who has lived in one city her entire life still doesn’t know how the main thoroughfares work.

My husband, by the way, is a person who could be dropped anywhere at all, in any city, and would figure out exactly how to get to his destination within minutes, often without a map. How he does this I do not know, but it feels like not being on the Amazing Race was a missed opportunity.

When I was young, my dad would helpfully give me directions or draw a map on a piece of notepaper, and those directions would include things like “turn east” and he then would sternly say that “the sun rises in the east” when I asked if it was a right or a left hand turn. Thanks, Dad, I am aware the sun rises in the east, but my old car didn’t have directional indicators on it. Now, of course, if someone gives me such a direction, I look at the direction I am going as indicated on my rearview mirror and mentally say Never Eat Shredded Wheat as I figure it out.

All of which is to say I have a lot of gratitude for modern technology, wherein I can tap an address into my phone and it directs me there, taking into consideration current traffic and everything. I think we should all take a moment to sit silently in awe, thinking about how people like me are no longer a menace on the road, driving in circles and crying, tears smudging our handwritten directions that are uselessly crumpled on our laps, wondering how to get back home. Now we just have to think about the other menaces on the road: people who are using their phones while driving because god forbid a comment on Instagram goes unanswered, people who illegally drop their kids off in the bus zone at the high school and then block off the intersection as other cars try to turn down the street, which reminds me so much of when I visited Cairo in 2001, cars going everywhere but with no acknowledgement of the rules of the road, people who have road rage and aggressively tailgate and pass in residential streets because they are in a hurry and more important than everyone else. But at least I – and others like me – are relatively calmly driving in new areas, listening to our phones tell us what to do.

I don’t really go many new places these days, but I had the opportunity to use my Map Overlord twice this week: once to drive to my niece’s Brownie group where I was guest-teaching outdoor yoga, and once to meet a friend for a walk in a beautiful part of the city that I had never been to.

As a sidebar: I had never taught kids’ yoga OR outdoor yoga before, and it was quite different from my usual demographic, albeit very fun to teach “unicorn pose” and “rainbow breathing” and make up stories about Brownies with magical wands who could transform frogs into unicorns into dolphins.

Other things that happened this week, other than being grateful to live in the modern age, is that we had a brief snowfall that melted away soon after, it officially became legwarmer season, and my neighbours had a plumber to their house.

I watched intermittently out the window for a long time, hoping to catch a glimpse of Hot Rod, but I had to go to the aforementioned Brownie meeting, and I missed him.

Pandemic Reading

Back in August, I put all my library holds on pause, as I wanted to work my way through a few books on my shelf that I wanted to read and reread. The pauses have all ended now, and this was the result:

After taking this photo, two more books came in, and when I went to pick them up, I saw this book, which was recommended by Swistle, (HI SWISTLE) just staring me in the face on the New and Notable shelf and honestly, I am not made of stone. In other words, I have a problem. Oh well. Game on, challenge accepted.

Little Fires Everywhere. This was one of the books I was wanting to reread, and I was blown away anew. IT IS SO GOOD. Celeste Ng is an incredible talent, a brilliant writer. She shows that people contain multitudes, and that there are many sides to a story. This book is about motherhood in all forms, but so much more – identity, secrets, appearances. Before you ask – no! I have not seen the show. It is highly unlikely that I will, mostly because I love the book so much and I find that I am inevitably disappointed by movies or shows based on books that I love. The sole exception to this rule is Little Women, both the recent film and the 1990s one, and I will also accept Sense and Sensibility as an excellent film.

Of Women and Salt. Oof. This is a very heavy, but ultimately hopeful, book. It’s a short, quick read but it contains so many layers and so much difficult material. Intergenerational trauma, the cycle of abuse, sacrifices made for a chance at a better life – all making the usual complexities of the mother-daughter relationship more fraught. The main characters are Cuban women, but there is an intertwined story about Salvadoran refugees that is heartbreaking and breathtaking.

People We Meet On Vacation. This was a very sweet best-friends-who-fall-in-love, opposites-attract book, just totally fun and fluffy. I mean, you know how this is going to turn out. It’s a perfect weekend/ beach/ vacation/ comfort read but there was a scene that got me thinking. The protagonist meets an old middle school nemesis who apologizes for being a jackass, and it reminded me of similar occasions in my own life. Specifically, I remember the advent of Facebook, and being “friended” by an old frenemy who treated me with the kind of emotional manipulation that certain girls wield in a terrible way. Do you hold onto grudges or let them go? People change, we are all in this journey together, I think. Shit happens and it’s rarely about US, you know? Mean kids had their own shit going on, that’s what made them mean. I remember accepting that woman’s Facebook friendship, and then thinking we are all just moms now, just going about our business and it was so freeing. Let go of that shit, is what I’m saying. The past is past. Anyhoo, this is a sweet little book about finding your home and happiness.

Have a beautiful week, friends! We have a birthday coming up in the house, so there will be cake in my future – how can that not be a great week! xo

Dreams, Jeans, Go(u)rds, Thanksgiving; Eighty-Two Weeks In

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Thanks and Giving

Thank you to everyone who reached out with kind words last week. It does make things lighter to know that we aren’t alone.

Today is Thanksgiving, for those of you not in Canada, and it is the first Thanksgiving in many years that we are not visiting my mother-in-law, which feels strange. It’s not even Covid-related – or, that’s not the main reason – we didn’t go because our vacation home, in which we stay when we visit, is currently a complete construction zone and is currently uninhabitable. We have added a second floor and after six weeks with no roof, the roof has just been put back on, and while there is no power or heat currently in the house, there are many workmen. When I say “construction zone” I really mean it. Staying with my mother-in-law is out of the question for logistical reasons, and the only other option would be to stay in a hotel and eat out and you know what, that part is Covid-related because I cannot fathom such a thing right now. Also, after the glory of last year’s Thanksgiving wherein I had my own kitchen and was able to contribute a number of vegetarian dishes to the meal, I cannot go back to eating a plate of peas and carrots for the festive dinner and later sneaking into the kitchen to scarf down peanut butter toast while everyone else digests their meal. Well, next year will be different.

We did have dinner at my parents’ place, and my mom made a number of vegetarian dishes along with a turkey, so everyone was happy. When it comes to cooking turkey, I will do anything for love but I won’t do that.

Dreams Last For So Long, Even After You’re Gone

I am not a person who puts much stock into dreams. I don’t tend to remember them, and if I do, they are usually incredibly boring and include dull day-to-day things like folding laundry endlessly or walking through the aisles in the grocery store. Back in my working days I used to dream about spreadsheets regularly, like the actual spreadsheets would just be scrolling through my dream-eyes. I don’t think I need to see a dream interpreter, is what I’m saying. Basically whatever is currently the most boring thing in my life, that is what I dream about.

But the other night, I had the most vivid dream that I was on a romantic vacation in Hawaii with Kevin from The Office. Before you ask, there was no sex involved, but Kevin was wearing a giant straw sunhat and flowered muumuu the whole time. The paparazzi was snapping photos that were captioned “Kevin From The Office and His New Girlfriend” so apparently, no one else knows his real name either.

What does it portend? Should my husband be worried? Am I going to leave him for Kevin? Or for another man who wears a straw hat and muumuu? I told my sons about the dream and they were most interested if Dream Kevin made me his World Famous Chili, and were disappointed when I said no. I mean, it’s probably not vegetarian.

It’s Fall, Fuckfaces

I have been eagerly preparing for Decorative Gourd Season in my usual way:

Even Barkley has gotten in on the action. He must have heard about throwing some multicoloured leaves in the mix, all haphazard, as you can see:

Of course, up here in Canada it is also Decorative Gord Season:

Now It’s A Whole Thing With Jean

You guys, Gigi was right (HI GIGI) (you were right!). Remember how excited I was for my new jeans, the first jean purchase I had made for years? Remember how excited I was at their comfort? Well. Gigi mentioned that some jeans have TOO much stretch and can become saggy and unattractive by midday and this is certainly the case with my not-so-exciting new jeans. They look so cute first thing in the morning, and then by 1:00 the waistband has started to slide down my body, leaving the crotch and bum sagging down. I tend to wear longer sweaters so it isn’t too obvious in that area, but the calves start to slide down to the ankles, and it’s all very disappointing. I don’t know what the answer is. Do I buy another pair of jeans that are less stretchy and comfortable? Do I go down a size so the jeans are uncomfortably snug until 1:00 in the afternoon? Do I just say fuck it all and wear my saggy jeans because where am I going and who am I seeing anyway? It’s a conundrum.

Pandemic Reading

I am still beta reading, and it’s so good that I schedule myself a certain amount of time each day to read make notes, and I’m constantly going over my allotted time with the thought just one more chapter, okay, just one more. The point is, I read just one other book this week and it’s a biggie:

Mansfield Park. It’s probably been 25 years since I read this, so it was almost like an entirely fresh read! I think this is the most complex and intricate of all the Austen novels. There is a LOT going on in this book, including such things as moral dilemmas, infidelity, divorce, and a whole lot of karma. One of the big themes in this book is that if you are a woman, and a man of independent means proposes to you, you should accept. NO QUESTIONS ASKED. Our incredibly beaten-down, put-upon heroine does NOT accept a proposal, for very solid reasons, and literally no one can believe it. They all keep trying to pressure her into this marriage, because WHY would she say no? There is a lot in here about class divides, and unlike any other Austen novel, there contains a non-wealthy or privileged setting. Of course there is a “happy ending,” depending on how you feel about “keeping romance in the family,” and all the same, I really love this book.

Happy Thanksgiving, friends! I hope you have a beautiful week. Our trees are mostly naked now, but it’s fun to crunch around in the leaves. xo