Category Archives: REM Y REM

Five For Friday: The Five W’s Of Rest Edition

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When (Is It Beddy-Bye Time). Years ago I came across a rather treacle-y poem called The Last Time, which talked about the many “lasts” in parenting, the upshot of which is enjoy it all because one day they won’t hold your hand to cross the street, you won’t read them bedtime stories, they won’t climb into your bed at night. Etcetera. I will admit that at some point in my life I would have been very emotionally moved but now it just fills me with puzzlement. When WAS the last time any of those things happened? Things I thought I’d never forget are completely lost to the annals of time. I cannot remember when I stopped tucking the children in to bed for the night, for example. I cannot remember what ages they were when I would have supervised bedtime and told them it was Lights Out. Were they 12 and 13? 11 and 12? Who can say. All I know is that it has been many years since I was responsible for anyone’s bedtime except my own, and my own bedtime happens much, much earlier than the rest of my family, including my husband. We never go to bed at the same time; I typically am in bed well before 9:00 pm and am fast asleep by the time he retires for the night. This is not a commentary about the state of our marriage, don’t worry! I am more of an Afternoon Delight kind of gal, rather than a Pina Colada one. Making love at midnight, are you crazy? Unless I decide to start a cocaine habit, that is OUT.

Where the magic happens.

Why (Am I Obsessed With Bedtime). Even without cocaine, I am a pretty high energy person, somewhat like a Jack Russell terrier, and I believe strongly in the yin/ yang connection – if a person has too much yang in their life, their bodies will force them to get yin, typically via a illness. Believe me, I have been there. Our go-go-go society pretends to value productivity at all costs, but in my mind true productivity can only come from a rested body and mind. REM Y REM is my motto – Rest, Exercise, Meditation, Yoga, and REM sleep. I really make a point to prioritize sleep; if I have a bad night of sleep, I have no compunction whatsoever about taking a sleep aid the next night to get reset. I feel no shame in that game; needs must, sometimes, as my grandma would say. I have always been an early riser; I wake up naturally between 4 and 4:30, and because of this I work my bedtime backwards from there. I typically get an average of 7 1/2 hours of sleep a night during the week, according to my watch, and I get a little more than that on weekends; I can usually coax myself back to sleep for an hour or two. It’s not often that I get less than 7 hours of sleep, but when I do I can really tell in my face and body, which become haggard-looking and creaky, respectively, not to mention my brain, which becomes foggy and unfocused. I’m like a cross between Aunt Bethany and C3PO. I’m not, however, an actual robot and I am in perimenopause, so despite my best efforts, plenty of nights have me waking up sweaty at strange hours with my mind racing, but I try to take it in a zen way, which means I am often doing breathing exercises in the middle of the night and telling myself that a) just lying and resting is beneficial, even if I’m not technically sleeping, and b) my body is a wonderland and hot flashes are a natural part of a woman’s life, if she’s lucky, which I am. Usually this borderline unhinged way of thinking is enough to lure my body back into slumberland, or into an incredible state of boredom that is akin to slumberland, at least until 4:30, when I am Wide Awake and Ready For The Day.

Good morning world!

What (Do I Do To Prepare). The act of getting ready for bed feels almost ritualistic for me; I love the feeling of ending the day and preparing for my cozy bed. I start my bedtime routine about an hour before I actually snuggle into said cozy bed; I floss and brush my teeth, I detangle and brush my hair, I remove my makeup and put on a number of different moisturizers on various parts of my face and body, and I put on my pajamas. Every day I carefully choose pretty workout clothing even though my gym is in the basement and I work out before anyone else is awake, and every day I put on a coordinated outfit with jewelry and makeup even if I am going nowhere and seeing no one, so it should surprise no one that every night I wear pretty, matching pajamas. Every evening I choose my pajama set based on the season, the temperature, and my general mood. I have many pajama sets, thanks to Christmas and birthday gifts mostly from my mother, but also from my husband. I have worn pretty nightwear for my entire life, so the idea of NOT choosing a pajama set is as foreign to me as not matching my bag to my shoes, or going a day without makeup, which is to say, incredibly foreign. After I am pajamaed and lubed up, I join my husband on the couch for a while, reading while he watches TV. I don’t read in bed because I reserve the bed for sleep and sexytimes only, and also to fold laundry on. I am adamant about not using any screens, other than the TV in my periphery, before my bedtime, to the chagrin of anyone trying to text me after 8:00. By the time 8:30 rolls around, I’m making my way up to bed and nestling in.

Where I wish the magic would happen.
Stop! Jammie Time.

Who (Changed My Life With Her Life-Changing Magic). Many years ago I adopted the KonMari method of decluttering and tidying, and I started rolling all my clothing pieces that reside in drawers. The exception was pajamas, which tend to be floppier than regular clothes, and resist rolling. My pajama drawer felt like a mess compared with its daytime-wear compatriots. That is, until a few years ago, when Gigi (HI GIGI) mentioned her brilliant method of rolling pajamas: she puts the top and bottom flat together and THEN rolls them up, and it is simply genius. Why didn’t I think of that? In any case, I have done that ever since, which means I have perfectly organized pajama drawers, and can choose my set with ease.

Rolling, rolling, rolling in a pajama drawer.

Where (Am I Going). In the theme of rest and relaxation, my husband and I are heading to Mexico for a week. We are meeting our good friends down there and I am so excited; am I more excited about the trip itself, or about not preparing dinners for a whole week? Who can say. I’m just happy to be going somewhere, to be honest. Maybe I’ll even have some pina coladas! Who am I kidding, I don’t even like pina coladas, no euphemism implied. Today is filled with all those exciting pre-holiday things, like a pedicure and sugaring, and seeing how many bikinis and sundresses I can squeeze into a carryon. In any case, I’m looking forward to fun, food, and lots of relaxation; I will catch up with you all when I return. Take care, friends. xo

Gratitude and Grievance

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Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

Yesterday my husband and I took a ten hour road trip to visit my parents. It was a gorgeous drive but I am a tiny bit tired; not, however, as tired as I was Saturday morning when I was woken up several times by a pack of howling coyotes in the vineyard. They even woke my very hard-of-hearing mother-in-law up, so you can imagine how loud that must have been.

What I’m saying is I’m not feeling particularly rested this holiday weekend, but it was such a beautiful drive and, of course, it was lovely to drive into my parents’ very welcoming home. This is what I’m looking at right this minute:

I meditate every day, as part of my self-care REM Y REM; most days the meditation is part of my yoga practice and savasana, but once or twice a week I listen to a guided meditation. A few weeks ago I listened to one that had a gratitude theme, and one of the lines in that meditation was What you focus on is what you see more of. I mean, yes, obviously. But also YES!

Let’s say, for example, that you wake up one morning and perceive, on looking in the mirror, that for the first time in a very long time, possibly years, a pimple has inexplicably developed underneath your left eye. Perhaps, instead of feeling gratitude for the exuberance of youth that has suddenly revisited your face in such a way, you unhappily focus all your vision on this little red protuberance. In fact, you focus on it so much that, upon viewing your reflection, you cannot see anything else. You might as well have no other facial features; your face has become Only The Pimple.

At the same time, you might notice that it has been three weeks since you last coloured your hair, and so the hair framing your Only The Pimple visage is white with grey accents, contrasting sharply with the rest of your kind-of-orange-fading-red hair. Instead of feeling deep gratitude for this interesting confluence of Youth and Old Age that is your current reflection, you feel simultaneously grieved for your loss of youth and also for this strange resurgence of youth. Instead of thinking that your body, indeed, is a Wonderland, you are laser focused on what you perceive as flaws, which are really not flaws at all but just glorious markers of the human experience.

What you focus on is what you see more of, and if you step back and soften the focus on the things that you are unhappy with, and maybe take a selfie with the knowledge that car lighting is the very best kind of lighting, maybe you can focus a bit more on gratitude than on grievances.

I’m sure that’s what the guided meditation meant.

So many of my friends have Gratitude Journals, and I deeply admire that, although I do not have one myself. My friend Ally (HI ALLY) recently brought my attention to something called a Grievance Journal. I had never heard of such a thing before but indeed, there are many such items for sale; the price of such things might surprise you, for example, this grievance journal is $208. Ally correctly pointed out that one could simply purchase a simple spiral notebook that would serve the purpose, but we are often more inspired by thematic stationary, aren’t we?

My thought on this is that anyone who had a diary with a lock and key in their youth was most likely keeping a Grievance Journal. I shudder to think of my own teen angst committed to the pages of my locked diaries, but on the other hand, maybe I was a trend-setter without even knowing it! I was Grievance Journaling before Grievance Journaling was cool.

Then again, what is a blog but a repository for grievances – and gratitude, of course. And because it is Thanksgiving, I will share with you, my dear readers, something that I am very grateful for. One year ago tomorrow Rex came to live with us!

I like to call this our Rexaversary, although I’m sure my husband would like me to note that he hates that term, and no one really knows why. Perhaps it reminds him of Brexit? Or the ridiculously stupid Wexit? As a side note, a couple of years ago we were at the dinner table and my older son said, out of absolutely nowhere, “Remember that thing, Wexit?” and for no reason at all we all became hysterical with laughter. WEXIT.

Anyway, it is one year tomorrow that we received such an incredible gift. He was much loved by his former family, and I still can’t believe my luck that we were the ones chosen to care for our Big Silly, our Notorious D.O.G., our Doughnut, our Puppy Pup, our Rexie. He’s brought so much joy to us every single day; it’s ironic that I was the person who, after Barkley died, was so devastated that I refused to even consider bringing another dog into our family, and now I have a shadow, every waking minute.

My view upon getting out of the shower.

I did feel, a year ago, like Clifford the Big Red Dog was coming to live with us, but after a year of Rex, he just seems like a normal-sized dog, and all other dogs are miniature. Anyway, it’s appropriate that this celebration day coincides (ISH) with Thanksgiving as we are all so thankful to have his Big Silly Energy in our home.

Weekly Reading

The Magician’s Assistant. I really enjoyed this book about Sabine, a magician’s assistant who was married to the magician. When he dies, she discovers everything about his past that he had kept hidden. What’s not to like? Complicated families, interesting female protagonist, beautiful prose. It checks all my boxes! The thing about Ann Patchett is while many of her books follow a similar theme of brokenness and family secrets, they are all so different and unique. Content warning for mentions of domestic and child abuse.

The Perfect Marriage. Did you ever read the Sweet Valley High books? Remember how the physical descriptions were “All American good looks, with blond hair and blue eyes, size six?” That was what this book was like, a grown up SVH, but a “thriller.” The physical descriptions of the characters were so over-the-top: he is a hunky six-foot-two man with broad shoulders, she is a tiny blonde with never a hair out of place, wearing her Louboutin heels and pencil skirts. Basically, a man is accused of murdering his mistress and his wife is his lawyer for the trial. Is this well-written? No. Are the characters interesting and nuanced? No. Is the dialogue natural and believable? No. Is the plot in any way realistic? Absolutely not. Is this book hilariously entertaining in its ridiculousness? Kind of! It’s pretty ridiculous but hey, it’s a fast read and won’t require any heavy thinking or reflection.

I hope you are all enjoying this holiday weekend, or, for my non-Canadian friends, this Monday in October! I am grateful for all of you. xo

The Bear Necessities

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Weekly Reading

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

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

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

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

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

Gnome Sweet Gnome

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gaston the kitchen gnome is presiding over the kitchen.

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

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

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

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

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

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