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The Return of Tiny Secret Festive Season; Thirty-Four Weeks In

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Last Thursday, in a single adrenaline-fuelled afternoon, I finished my Christmas shopping. I do most of my shopping online, but there are always a few things that I want to physically look at, hence last Thursday’s trip to the mall.

The mall, you guys. The mall. One thing I will say about the mall is that Covid safety precautions are being followed to a tee, from social distancing to mask-wearing to extra cleaning to hand sanitizing stations everywhere. I had to sanitize my hands each time I entered a store, RIP my skin. So, I congratulate the mall and all my fellow Thursday afternoon mall-goers for following the rules and embracing the new protocols. I only saw ONE elderly woman with a mask under her nose, which is a big improvement over any other time I have been out in public.

However, it’s still the mall. I started off in a Let’s Fucking Go kind of mood, all energized and excited because, in the very first store I found the exact perfect gift for my husband’s sister. I am not a person for whom Gift-Giving is my Love Language, but I swear I got a little burst of serotonin when I obtained the item.

I was energetic, happy, and chatty for the first hour, but by the time I got to my last stop, The Bay – what IS IT with The Bay, you guys, why is it always so dreadful and why do I continue to shop there – I was definitely flagging. I was sweltering in my mask, winter coat, and boots, loaded down with bags, and dying for a drink of water when I got to the checkout and the person in front of me was having a very long discussion with the cashier about a coupon, and why couldn’t it be used in this situation, and okay, let’s put everything on separate bills so it could, and I GET IT, WE ALL WANT TO SAVE MONEY BUT WHY ARE THERE ONLY THREE TILLS OPEN FOR THIS ENTIRE GIANT DEPARTMENT STORE.

Anyway. Eventually I was back in the parking lot, sitting in my car just staring out the window for a good five minutes before I put on my seat belt and drove home.

Once I got home, with all my shopping in the rearview mirror, I immediately became festive-feeling and swapped out all my hand soaps for ones that are named Winter Candy Apple and Frosted Coconut Snowball, so the Tiny Secret Festive Season has begun! My grocery notepad has been exchanged for a festive-themed one, on November 1 I put on my Christmas bracelet and brought out my red-plaid pajamas, and I’ve been using Vanilla Candy Cane body butter on my feet at night. Sugar cookie and gingerbread dough have been made and are in the freezer, and on Thursday I will swap out my poppy and apple-themed tea towels for Christmas ones. My Buddy the Elf mugs will make their appearance this week for morning coffee, mark my words.

We had a short streak of extremely mild weather, and so my husband and I took advantage of it to hang the Christmas ornaments in our Mayday tree. Every November there is someone who, if a person expresses even mild joy about the festive season, will sternly and austerely remind that person that no one should ever express such feelings prior to Remembrance Day, that it is disrespectful and wrong. Let me tell you: I do not agree with this character assessment. If a person wants to go full-on Clark Griswold the second the Halloween decorations come down, let your sparkly, Santa-themed flag fly. Let’s take joy where we can and if that means watching the Hallmark channel, putting up a tree, or just eating peppermint-flavoured goodies in November, DO IT.

If you think for even one moment that we are, in the Boyhouse, not going to embrace a 18 degree day IN NOVEMBER and use it to glovelessly tie ornaments onto a tree with tiny little strings, then you have another think coming. Unfortunately, this weekend was snowy with wind warnings, and subsequently we had to send the boys out looking on the street to find a couple of balls that had broken off in the wind, but that’s tradition. Calgary tradition.

Pandemic Reading

This was really fun to read, about working in the bond markets – specifically Salomon Brothers – in the 1980s. Woo! What a ride. Some of you may know that I worked on the structured products desk on a natural gas trading floor, and did this take me back. I worked during the California Crisis, when natural gas and electricity prices skyrocketed, and I remember the market volatility and all that ensued. Also, let’s just say that bond traders in the 1980s were not dissimilar to natgas traders in the 2000s. I remember one guy – Tom – who became so infuriated that he repeatedly smashed his phone on his desk until it broke. He had to go to an anger management course, but I don’t think that was as effective as the reaction of the rest of the floor. Any time Tom would walk by, everyone would exaggeratedly cover their phones. If he came to discuss a deal, someone would say Don’t fucking touch my phone, man, I need it. This went on…well, it’s probably still going on. The pranks and dares, too. I remember one guy was paid $10 to EAT a piece of styrofoam. He did it and was quite unwell for the rest of the day. There was also a bet to see who could drink more water in the span of 30 minutes and then not use the bathroom for two hours. The winner, I recall, was not feeling well after over-hydrating. Ah, good times. Anyway, this book was a lot of fun if you’re into that sort of thing, but note that it was written in 1989 and the extremely insensitive language reflects that.

This was just LOVELY and a perfect read for the festive season. So Christmas-spirit-ish. The author was born and raised in Calgary, too, so yay!

I will leave you with my newest Tiny Secret Festive items – a series of handmade bookmarks by a VERY talented, young local artist. Aren’t they adorable? I have a number of her bookmarks but I really wanted some festive ones, and now the problem is choosing which to use!

Have a beautiful week, my friends. If you’re also a Tiny Secret Festive person, how are you celebrating this week? xo

Halloween and Blue Moon Rising; Thirty-Three Weeks In

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There was a war going on in our neighbourhood and my husband declared himself the winner.

So how was your Halloween?

We had about 25 Trick or Treaters, which was a great number for our street. Our neighbours told me that they each had about six, and so I think kids were only going to houses with lots of decorations this year; a signalling thing, I suppose.

I handed out full-size chocolate bars like a Very Fancy Lady, in the most Covid-safe way I could think of. Most of the people in my neighbourhood, according to the Facebook page, had treat tables set up with little bags, and in one case, a giant spiderweb with full-size bars stuck in the web. However, I like to see the sweet costumes, and so tongs and PPE it was.

We weren’t going to carve pumpkins as the Decorative Gourds I bought are now, due to the extreme cold and snow, mush, but my friend offered me hers and so I stole an idea from my son’s friend:

I’m having a bit of a Nora Ephron I Feel Bad About My Neck moment here.

My kids did not Trick or Treat, being “too old,” but they did wander the neighbourhood for a few hours with their friends, all eight of wearing burlap sacks on their heads. Eight giant teen boys wandering around in the dark wearing burlap sacks on their heads, what could possibly go wrong.

Speaking of scary and spooky things, I have been reading Hans Christian Anderson Fairy Tales. When was the last time you read an actual fairy tale, one that hadn’t been modernized or Disney-fied? YOU GUYS. Shit gets REAL in Fairy Tale Land.

It all started months ago when I put this collection on hold at the library, as I was thinking about the original Little Mermaid. I knew it was a sad ending but couldn’t exactly remember how it went, and yes, it is definitely worth reading about the sharp and shooting pain that the Little Mermaid has once her fin is severed and she’s walking around on legs. It is a very sad story, but no more sad than most of the tales in this collection.

For example: The Little Match Girl. I vividly recall reading this story as a child; it was terrifying then and it’s even more so now. Here’s the premise for this tale geared towards children: a little girl, whose job it is to sell boxes of matches to passerby, is wandering around the street barefoot on New Year’s Eve. Let us recall that Hans Christian Anderson was Danish, and therefore it would be VERY cold wandering around the street barefoot on New Year’s Eve. She’s barefoot because she has no shoes; she wore her mother’s shoes to go out to sell matches, but as they were too big she lost them while dodging carriages in the street. Anyway, here it is, New Year’s Eve, and she is scared to go home as she has sold no matches today, and if she goes home without the pennies she would have earned for selling matches, her father will beat her.

Let’s just let all that information sink in for a moment.

So anyway, here she is, freezing cold and hungry – obviously she hasn’t eaten either – and not all that willing to go home. In any case, home is a literal shack with holes in the wall, and there’s no food there anyway. She sits down in a little corner of the street and tries to warm her hands by lighting a match, and from the illumination she starts to hallucinate things like a warm fireplace, a roast goose dinner, and a Christmas tree. She lights match after match and the hallucinations – yes, children’s story – continue until she sees her dead grandmother, the “only person who ever loved her.” She begs her grandmother to take her to heaven with her, and she subsequently dies, frozen, with a smile on her face.

WELL.

Another story I remember from my childhood – I am sure I had one of those little records with a book that you could read along with, that had a little chime when it was time to turn the page – was Thumbelina. Wow, is that a messed up story. I remember loving it as a child, and I can see why: everything is in miniature. Thumbelina has a walnut shell for a bed, a tulip petal for a boat, a little hammock woven out of grass. So sweet! And yet the story itself is Crazy Town. Thumbelina gets kidnapped by a toad’s mother so that she can be the toad’s bride. Hello meddling mother-in-law. She is, understandably, distraught about being kidnapped and marooned on a lily pad so she can’t escape her toady bridal chamber, but some fishes and a butterfly help her escape. When winter comes she seeks shelter with a little field mouse, who introduces her to her neighbour, a mole. The mole wants to marry her and all her troubles will be gone, as the mole is portrayed as being wealthy. The only catch is, because her new husband will be a MOLE, she will have to live underground forever and never see the sun.

I feel like a whole series of dissertations could be written about the symbolism herewith.

Anyway, Thumbelina finds what everyone thinks is a dead bird, but it’s really only just frozen. She nurses it back to health and it helps her escape her safe-yet-forever-underground life of Mrs. Mole; she subsequently lands in a flower and marries a little tiny prince who is in charge of all the flowers, and yay, happy ending.

Pandemic Reading

Thankfully, I did read something besides the unsettling and opium-trippy fairy tales this week.

I cannot recommend this book enough. It follows a woman who is principal of a Muslim girls’ school that is targeted by a shooter; it describes her life growing up and coming of age as a Muslim in America. It’s a very moving and important read.

On the other side of the spectrum was this book. It was the book equivalent of coming inside after shovelling snow in the freezing cold, and having a chai and a gingersnap. It’s a sweet, satisfying, warm hug of a book.

This series of essays about being a gay black Christian man in America was both hilarious and thought-provoking.

Here’s my best shot of the Blue Moon on Halloween; and on that note, Happy November! Or, as I like to call it, Happy Countdown To The Christmas Season! I’m thinking about all my American friends this week, and hoping for a peaceful transfer of power. Stay well. xo

Dressy Sweatpants and Mom Jeans; Thirty-Two Weeks In

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I absolutely appreciate when companies know their customers; I love when businesses see an opportunity and seize it, particularly this year. It’s a Read The Room kind of thing; find out what the people want and give it to them.

Which is why I find it endlessly entertaining, the advertisements that I have been getting on Facebook lately. It is almost exclusively Peloton gear followed by a company that is making something called “Dressy Sweatpants” or “Dressy Leggings.” It feels very yin-yang to me. It’s the season to move! alongside Why people love the Dressy Sweatpant! Leggings, but Dressy! You guys. I’m all about comfort in our own homes, but let’s face facts here: there is nothing dressy about sweatpants. We can add all the ruching we like but they are still, ultimately, sweatpants.

This is absolutely not a criticism of sweatpants; after all, I am a woman who wears yoga pants at least five days a week. I wear yoga tanks with built-in shelf bras almost daily, to the point that it feels weird to wear a regular bra. I am all about being comfortable in our clothes and in our own skin, but we don’t need to make believe that the clothes we love and wear are something that they are not. Dress pants are dress pants. Sweatpants are sweatpants. IT IS OKAY TO BE WHO WE ARE, AND THAT EXTENDS TO PANTS.

Wow, I have feelings about this.

I was rummaging in my legwarmer drawer and discovered an unopened package of black control-top pantyhose. Pantyhose, you guys. Like, to wear with a dress. I stared at it like it was a relic from another time, which, let’s face it, it is. I tried not to think of my closetful of beautiful (black) dresses; when will they be worn again? Who knows. And heels! Well, it’s best to put that thought away for a while.

Why, you may ask, was I rummaging in my legwarmer drawer? First of all, yes, I have an entire drawer devoted to legwarmers, and that is because I live on Planet Hoth, apparently. Calgary is a city that takes mean-reversion, with respect to temperatures, very seriously; the gorgeous fall weather has completely turned to the depths of winter. As a brief aside, it was minus 18 yesterday morning when I went to the car wash, to help out my husband who was going to put on my winter tires. I filled the car with gas while I was there and I am not exaggerating: it took nearly twenty minutes to fill the tank. Twenty minutes! I kept looking at the numbers moving so slowly, and I would go into the station to tell the attendant that there was something wrong. “It must be because of the cold,” he told me, which, well. It’s Calgary. Minus 18, while unpleasant, is not unusual, and I have filled my car in much colder temperatures. However, there was nothing to be done about it as I’d already prepaid. I tried to be zen and just drink my travel mug of coffee and scroll through my phone, thinking this is what I’d be doing anyway, at home, but meanwhile, I was freezing and wondering if there was a It’s Going To Blow kind of emergency going on with the pump.

Last week was my husband’s birthday and he took the day off work; our original plan was to go hiking in the mountains, but the black ice and blowing snow on the highway deterred us. We ended up in a provincial park in the foothills, and the minus 13 windchill meant that we had the whole park to ourselves! We ended up hiking 8 km in gusting wind and snow, but I am trying to embrace my Nordic ancestry with the mantra there’s no bad weather, just bad clothes and hence, legwarmers. Well, legwarmers and many other layers too.

Circling back to companies and businesses, I have been getting many, many texts lately from Garage, a store I have never shopped at in my life. How did they get my number? Was it sold to them by some other store? I have no idea, but I am amused at their constant texts to me about buying the coolest mom jeans. The Coolest Mom Jeans. I have much to say about this, but mostly: Wrong Audience.

Do any moms – and the group to which I am referring is my own mid-forties age group – actually wear Mom Jeans? I mean technically, we are moms, and so our jeans are mom jeans, but as I am sure you know, I am referring to the high-waisted, pleated front jeans that were ubiquitous in the early nineties. I think there is some kind of Fashion Law that states if you wore something in high school, and the style comes around again – like it has with these specific, high-waisted, loose-fitting, fitted-ankle jeans – then you should not wear it again. Not that I need a Fashion Law to tell me what to do. It’s not a thing that is going to happen anyway.

Remember when the Blue Jays won the World Series? I was rocking the Mom Jeans back then, although at the time they were just Jeans.

I’m not sure anything in this photo could be more “early nineties” if it tried. Pirate blouse! Mom jeans! Spiral permed hair! Evian water! The home decor!

Anyway, thank you very much, Garage, but I am not revisiting my erstwhile youth.

It occurs to me that, since I don’t know anyone at all in the Mom category who wears Mom Jeans, perhaps they should be renamed Grandma Jeans as I think that style is more of my OWN mother’s generation.

Unless – UNLESS – the younger generation of moms are all wearing these jeans. This just occurred to me right now. All of my mom friends are in their forties, but we are the Old Moms. The Young Moms, for all I know, could be rocking these. Meanwhile, I am living in yoga pants and long sweaters and am being marketed “dressy sweatpants” and “leggings, but dressy.” That is, when I’m not getting texts about the latest Mom Jeans.

On another note, this week Le Chateau announced that they are closing their doors; Canadian women of a certain age sighed with nostalgic sadness on hearing that. Le Chateau was where I spent my hard-earned babysitting and Pizza Hut money; I saved up to buy a pair of red plaid hot pants – HOT PANTS – and wore them with black tights, a turtleneck, and a blazer for my first day of Grade Eleven, at a new school. I don’t often wish that we had cell phones when I was in high school, but I wish I had a photo of that outfit. Instead, I will leave you with this classic, from a class trip to Italy:

That was the same blazer I started the year with, sweetly paired with jeans – high waisted and belted, I am sure – and a floral crop top. Ah, the spirit of youth.

Pandemic Reading

I am not going to pan this book entirely because it had a nice underlying theme – be who you are, accept other people for who they are – and it had great descriptions of clothing and society in 1950s New York, Miami, and Havana. However, the plot line was ridiculous and the book itself was very silly.

I like to read popular books to see what the hype is all about, and this one was decent – but ultimately unsatisfying and disappointing. It could have been so much more, but wasn’t.

This was very fun; it’s a contemporary Bengali classic and a translation, which I always find interesting. Three generations of Bengali women, with a little reincarnation thrown in…quite fun and, despite the name, light.

Happy Halloween week, everyone! The decorative gourds are getting mushy and there is too much snow to put up the gravestones and crosses, but who knows! Anything can happen. Don’t forget that Saturday is a Blue Moon AND it’s time change, so let’s take a deep breath and have a treat or two.

She Died The Way She Lived, Standing In Line At Costco; Thirty and Thirty-One Weeks In

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I am not the type of person to talk about dreams or analyze dreams, but last night I dreamt I had a black cat, which I bathed, and subsequently the cat turned white. Then, as its fur dried, it went from white to grey, and back to black. The whole time, the cat was cuddling me and putting on a bejeweled collar with its own paws so I could photograph the miraculous colour change, but people kept stopping by and visiting and I never had a chance to take the pictures.

I’m not going to go into a what does it all mean thing, but a) I do not have a cat and never have had a cat, and b) I don’t know much about cats but I do know that one would never bath one in a bathtub without suffering massive bodily harm. Also, cats cannot put on their own, albeit adorable, bejeweled collars.

What does it all mean, what are we doing with our wild and precious lives.

Well. The last two weeks were “short weeks” but in the manner of such felt a bit long. I think it’s because I had two travel days, one on either side of Thanksgiving, and the week before the holiday my husband was out of town, meaning that I was solo parenting and preparing for travel all by my lonesome. Although, let’s face it, travel preparations ALWAYS are my domain; part of this is my own control-freak-about-packing nature, and part is just, well, nature.

We were gone such a short time but I found that the grocery situation was pretty bad by the time Wednesday – my typical Grocery Day – came around, and so I found myself this week at both Costco and Superstore. At this point in the pandemic, I feel like I have the mental and physical strength to accomplish this kind of epic grocery shopping without my week going off the rails. My friend Mo (HI MO) had mentioned that, the Friday before Thanksgiving, she had experienced a lineup-outside-of-Costco that we hadn’t seen in months, but I figured it was a Thanksgiving thing.

Indeed, there was no lineup to get into Costco, but it was crazily busy inside. It made me slightly concerned, in a are we panic-buying again? kind of way. As an answer to that, I am NOT panic-buying but I definitely have a very well-stocked pantry and I am not going to let the base levels get down too low, if you know what I’m saying.

When I finished my shopping I started towards the checkout…and then realized that I didn’t have far to go.

That line went from the checkout to almost the bakery, so pretty much the length of the store. Specifically, it went to the aisle that houses both Christmas and Halloween decorations.

As an aside, I realized that the end of September is a magical time where Halloween candy sits alongside Advent calendars and Christmas-themed chocolates in Superstore. What an age we live in.

Just to confirm that yes, that was indeed the line to check out and not just a bunch of people randomly stationary in a line-like formation, I asked the older lady at what appeared to be the end. “Yes, it is, but I’m waiting for my daughter and she has another cart, a whole other cart, and she is coming back.” she replied in an alarmed kind of way, as if I would explode or something knowing that another cart was going to be in front of me. I mean, it’s Costco. People have two carts all the time. I smiled and nodded, and then realized we are all wearing masks so maybe she couldn’t tell I was smiling, and then replied, okay, great in a cheerful, I Totally Understand kind of way.

After a few minutes, some line movement, and more dithering, the lady turned to me. “I’ll go get her, my daughter, she’s in the clothes I think,” the lady said, as if I was going to aggressively report her to the Costco authorities if the cart didn’t materialize immediately. “Can you watch my cart?”

Of course, I replied, and the lady bustled into the clothing section, at which point the line started moving in a big way. Well, it seemed like a big way since we are all six feet away from each other but perhaps it was just two or three carts moving.

In normal times, I would have just simply moved the lady’s cart forward without thinking about it. However, it is not normal times and I was momentarily paralyzed. I mean, is it OKAY to touch someone else’s stuff? What is the protocol here? Meanwhile, the gap between the lady’s cart and the line was getting big and there were many, many people behind me. Would my paralysis cause a road-rage-like episode in Costco?

Still no sign of the lady, and probably only a minute or two had passed, but that is a LONG time in Costco world. I took a breath and pushed her cart forward, while simultaneously pulling my cart behind me.

Side note: do you know how hard that is? It was a feat of strength that should be reserved for Festivus.

We had moved up SIGNIFICANTLY, after no small effort on my part to Keep Things Moving, by the time the lady returned, with her daughter. I quickly used my hand sanitizer and no one seemed put out that I had touched a cart that wasn’t mine. I’m actually not sure the lady even noticed we had moved, although we had moved up all the way to the candy and gum aisle. Maybe she thought that is where she had left it, maybe she thought the cart magically rolled itself to its new position, who knows.

The line that was daunting was actually not bad as they had a fellow at the front directing traffic, pointing people over to specific lineups which, in my humble opinion, is a brilliant idea and should be adopted by every single large grocery store forever.

I chatted with the lady behind me about how busy it was, and she postulated that it was because it was payday, so maybe that is the explanation, rather than pandemic panic shopping. We will see and in the meantime, I might not shop on the 15th and 30th of the month.

Pandemic Reading

With a long weekend and, well, snow, I have gotten a lot of reading done over the past two weeks!

This was one of the best books I have read in a long time, and I had just picked it up on a whim at the library, because I liked the cover. Don’t you love when that happens? This is a collection of short stories about people from Croatia – refugees and immigrants, mostly living in Canada. The author herself lives in Edmonton; it’s always fun to read about familiar places.

I really liked this; I like Elizabeth Strout so much. It wasn’t my favourite of hers, but it was very thought-provoking and, in the manner of Elizabeth Strout, beautifully written.

This was very well-done, a real page-turner, but the material is very disturbing and upsetting. That is my warning: if you are NOT easily upset, then this is a very excellent read. It deals with a Nigerian refugee and a British woman and how their worlds collide.

This was a reread for me; it is delightful and wonderful and I highly recommend it. It’s about the dwellers of an apartment building during one hour period in a day. I love stories that show how interconnected we all are, even when we don’t realize it. Plus, the author lives in Calgary!

This was an extremely silly book. If you are in the mood for something strangely long, but very fluffy and silly, this is it. A relationship advice columnist and a top-notch divorce lawyer meet; both of them have sworn off relationships but, well. I’m sure you can figure out the rest.

I did like this book, I did. But I am going to issue a major trigger warning here: disturbing content. It follows three women and deals with arranged marriage, Hindu and Indian culture, adoption, infertility, and depression.

Since I inadvertently reread Durable Goods, I thought I should purposefully reread the sequel. You know, I really like Elizabeth Berg. I like her character development, I like her style. This was a very sweet and satisfying book, which was just what I needed.

These photos were from a sweet hike we did at Thanksgiving; the area had been devastated by forest fires back in 2003 and it was interesting to hike around the burnt trees and new growth. Plus, waterfalls! DO go chasing waterfalls and have a beautiful week, everyone! xo

Nicole’s Favourite Things: The Thanksgiving Edition

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With the Thanksgiving weekend, the amazing streak of weather has ended, leaving us with mostly bare trees and, well, some snow. I’m not sad, though; I knew the streak would end and I’m just happy, in a We’ll Always Have Paris kind of way.

“You do realize, this is what it’s like in the rest of the world?” a student said to me last week as I marvelled at the fact that we still had leaves on the trees in October. Leaves! On the trees! In October! The rest of the world is lucky, because this is a rare and precious GIFT in Calgary. Normally, we have a hard freeze in early September, followed by a gusting windstorm, which typically means that we have bare trees from September through to May. Wow, writing that down is a bit depressing. Anyway, NOT THIS YEAR.

Finally I understand what all you fall-crazy people are talking about. Usually fall is just a precursor to the long winter ahead, but NOT THIS YEAR. Any year that winter doesn’t start in September, well, that’s one less month of winter. Every day, every single day of this pandemic, I have been spending a lot of time outside, walking and/or running. The past six weeks, with glorious sunshine and warm temperatures, each walk has felt like a beautiful gift and I find myself humming look around, look around, how lucky we are to be alive right now.

Last week I went for an early morning 6 km before dropping the kids at school; I watched the sun come up and brighten the sky. When I started the run it was dark and drizzly, and when I was finishing, I saw a double rainbow.

If there is one thing that this pandemic has taught me, it is to appreciate every little thing that there is to appreciate. As Ma Ingalls always said, usually when the crop failed or they were almost literally starving or freezing to death, there’s no great loss without some small gain. Many things have been lost in this pandemic, but I am determined to keep my eyes open for all gains.

And it was Thanksgiving this weekend! So I think it is appropriate to write…

Nicole’s Favourite Things: The Thanksgiving Edition

The Reno

One year ago, we started our renovation of our vacation place, which was my husband’s grandmother’s house. I am incredibly thankful for it for many reasons – reliably flushing toilet! functional kitchen! – but mostly, it has given us a beautiful place to stay in order to safely visit my mother-in-law. The aforementioned functional kitchen also means that I was able to roast a bunch of vegetables and chickpeas, and make a big salad, and contribute to the Thanksgiving dinner that I otherwise would have had almost nothing to eat at. After eating a plate of peas and carrots last year, and then later sneaking into the kitchen to scarf down peanut butter toast in secret, this is a huge gift.

My contribution!

Also, it has a perfect place for me to drink my coffee and smoothies at, while reading.

Fall Colours

A few weeks ago we visited my parents for my dad’s birthday, and I have never seen such colours at that time of the year. Am I turning into a Fall Person? What’s next? Pumpkin spice lattes? (answer: no).

It’s Decorative Gourd Season, Motherfuckers

This never gets old; a friend pointed out it was written ELEVEN years ago and wow, sometimes it seems like life is one of those fast-forward cartoons of pages tearing off of calendars. Anyway, the Co-Op had an assortment of decorative gourds, white pumpkins, and, of course, the regular kind. They were also selling bags of assorted decorative gourds but it turns out I have Real Opinions on decorative gourds and so carefully chose each one carefully from the bin.

There is a competition in the neighbourhood between my husband and a younger guy down the street, when it comes to seasonal decorations. As I was walking the dog, the young upstart asked me where OUR Halloween decorations were, as his have been up for two weeks already. Game on, shit is getting real this weekend. In the meantime, my decorative gourd display is the best motherfucking decorative gourd display on our street, DEAL WITH IT.

My dear friend Taryn (HI TARYN) gave me this sweet thing, so I can celebrate Decorative Gourd Season year-round. IT IS ALWAYS DECORATIVE GOURD SEASON IN THE BOYHOUSE NOW, MOTHERFUCKERS.

Grapes and Apples, Oh My

I know, I know, I just wrote about apples, but the season is full-on and I’m gorging. My mother-in-law saved me this “small amount” of Sheraton grapes from harvest a couple of weeks ago and my younger son and I tried our best to eat them all on the long weekend. We failed.

Typical conversation with my mother-in-law:

Her: Do you want me to save you some grapes?

Me: Sure! Just a small amount, you know, a few bunches would be great.

Her: sets aside ten pounds, thinking that is a small amount appropriate for one to two people to eat in three days

If I had one more day, I could have finished them. Alas.

My New Running Pants

To be honest, now that there is snow on the ground I’m going to be taking my running workouts back to the treadmill, but these funky new pants from Lululemon are my new favourite and have extended my season outside. They have pockets! And lots of support! And sweat vents! And I’m colourful like a speedy peacock!

Seasonal Masks

It all started when my older son mentioned he wanted a Halloween style mask; my friend Liana (HI LIANA) mentioned her friend Maria. She had made some masks that I had bought back in the summer, and it turns out she had just got some seasonal fabric for Halloween and Christmas. Well, and I had to get some adorable llama and birdie ones, just because.

Thank You For Being A Friend

In the spirit of gratitude, I want to extend my thanks to you, dear reader, for indulging me by reading this blog. My goodness, it has been TWELVE YEARS. Thank you for being a friend. xo

Mask courtesy of my friend Michelle (HI MICHELLE)!

Everything’s Coming Up Milhouse; Twenty-Nine Weeks In

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Two incredible things of note happened this week: I got excused from jury duty, and my son shaved off his moustache.

I am a woman who believes strongly in body autonomy, and that everyone should be able to express themselves via personal style, and yet. Yet I am happy that he – voluntarily, I hasten to point out – is no longer moustachioed.

As for jury duty, well, I do not think I need to say more. My grandmother, apparently, had wanted to serve on jury duty for her entire life and wasn’t called until she was in palliative care. Sorry, Grandma! I’m pretty relieved. I said to my husband that actually, I wouldn’t mind jury duty if I a) had nothing else to do, and b) it wasn’t a grisly or horrifying trial like a murder or assault, but something “nice.” What, you may ask, would be a “nice” trial? That I do not know. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I implore you to find this sparkly unicorn guilty of horn theft because, as you will see, SHE IS BUT A HORSE.

In any case, no jury duty and no moustache: everything’s coming up Milhouse!

Also this week I finally had my annual mammogram. All the diagnostics centres were closed for a few months in the spring, and it took me several weeks of calling and being on hold to book this appointment, back in July. I know many of you aren’t eligible to get mammograms until you are 50, but my requisition forms state “lumpy and dense” and so I go annually, and have for several years. Lumpy and dense. The feminine mystique stands to take a bit of a beating here.

Medical masks are mandatory at the diagnostics centre, as opposed to cloth ones, and as soon as I was out of the building I switched to my cloth one because this is where I am at, now, that I feel unfashionable without a mask that goes with my outfit. I have leveled up.

My sons wear masks all day long to school, and even when walking home after school, if they are walking with friends. My older son went so far as to say that he actually thinks “people look more attractive with masks,” and both sons have said to me, separately, that even when the pandemic is over, they will still wear masks in certain situations to avoid breathing in other people’s germs and to keep other people from getting sick. After all, my younger son said to me, I have all these masks, I might as well use them.

Is this Stockholm Syndrome?

I was talking to my friend Nicole (HI NICOLE) about this, and she said she hopes to see a cultural shift, in which we are not, as a society, constantly pressured to be in public while ill. This is an excellent point. Nicole is a professor and I confessed to her that while I was in university, I showed up to countless classes and exams sick, due to the stressful possibility of missing key concepts or getting a poor grade. If you recall, missing exams meant that you really needed a doctor’s note to be excused or rescheduled, and who among us goes to the doctor for the common cold? I clearly remember writing a third-or-fourth year final and using up an entire purse package of tissues while I coughed and sneezed and blew my nose. Who even knows how many people I would have passed that cold on to. Even think about pre-pandemic commercials for cold and flu medication, that advertised dosing up because no one can afford to take a sick day, least of all mothers who are busily Doing It All.

Well, maybe there will be a shift. The thought of just doping ourselves up to alleviate cold and flu symptoms and then going about our day-to-day lives seems so antiquated right now, just like being indoors in a public place without a (fashionably coordinated) mask or shaking someone’s hand.

Pandemic Reading

This, this was the palate cleanser I needed after all my heavy books last week. Perfectly fluffy and lovely, two best friends pretend to be engaged to each other, but then feelings get involved. I bet you would never guess the ending.

I cannot believe I made it this long in life without reading Virginia Woolf. Sure, I read A Room of One’s Own, or an annotated version thereof, in university, but nothing else. Until now! This was a really incredible read, although in all honesty it took me a few pages to get used to the stream-of-consciousness style of writing. The details and the theme of interconnectedness really spoke to me. Also of note: Mrs. Dalloway is described as having heart issues, in need of daily rests, and having grown very thin and pale since her illness, her illness being the Spanish flu. The other thing of note is that Septimus is suffering from what was known as shell shock, which was a topic in the book about trauma I just read, The Body Keeps The Score. Very interesting, and there are some great Downton Abbey-like party descriptions, which I am HERE FOR.

Oh, this book. This book really resonated with me as a yoga practitioner and teacher, and a longtime cardio enthusiast. Particularly after my hip injury, I find that I am constantly filled with gratitude and joy that I can move without pain; running, walking, biking, I feel is a pure gift now. However, there were many parts that made me very, very sad: for example, talking about the feeling of community and collective joy that comes with group exercise in person, and the sound of synchronized breathing that comes with a flow yoga class when we are all together. Well. We are lucky to be so connected in a virtual way, and able to be together while apart, I must keep that in mind. I’m sure Mrs. Dalloway would have had a grave sense of isolation and loneliness while almost dying from the Spanish flu and would have given anything for the kind of connectivity we have now.

Happy October! It’s hard to believe that Thanksgiving is this weekend already. I hope you all have a beautiful week; I will be practicing gratitude and thankfulness. Particularly about no jury duty and a clean-shaven face. xo

One More For The Road; Twenty-Eight Weeks In

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As anyone who knows me is aware, I always have a song stuck in my head. Always. I like to think of it as the Soundtrack of My Life. The last few months, I have had snippets of the Hamilton soundtrack stuck in my head, and not just the big ones like Here comes the general! or Helplessssssssss or I’m not throwing away my! shot! but random lines from random songs. I’ve woken up in the middle of the night suddenly thinking Angelicaaaa, ELIIIIza, and Peggy. The Schuyler Sisters! or, horribly, We have resorted to eating our horses. ON REPEAT. This has been going on for months, no matter what else I have listened to during the day.

Then, suddenly, last week I woke up with – of all things – the Lido Shuffle going through my head. How or why this happened I cannot say, but I slid into my car singing to myself one more for the roooooaaaad, turned on the ignition, and THE LIDO SHUFFLE WAS PLAYING ON THE RADIO.

The station I listen to most of the time is Sirius 70s on 7, and I was driving to teach at the community centre the other day when The Coward of the County came on. I don’t want to flex on you people, but I’m a bit of a savant when it comes to song lyrics. This is particularly true with anything I may have heard often in my youth, and my parents were big Kenny Rogers On Vinyl people. All of which is to say, although I hadn’t heard The Coward of the County for at least thirty years, I automatically sang along.

You know how there are songs that you know all the words to, but have never really given them much thought? That was me. As I sang my way through the song, I startled myself. Have you LISTENED to those lyrics? It is an incredibly violent song. Gang rape! Murder! Probable execution TIMES TWO. All sang in a kindly, lovely, Kenny Rogers voice. I had a Moment, not unlike when I discovered that Ring Around The Rosy was all about dying from the plague. Why is this tune so cheerful and the subject matter so grisly.

We have Sonos speakers all through the house and the kitchen ones are what are utilized for when dinner is being prepared, eaten, and cleaned up after. Last Sunday I had Soul Classics playing, and after dinner I retired to the couch to read while my husband and younger son cleaned up the kitchen. My older son went downstairs to finish some homework, and as I picked up my book, I could hear the distinct, but faint, sound of Blue Rodeo’s Try. At the same time, I could hear, much louder, Soul Classics from the kitchen. The window was open so I stepped outside to see if Try was coming from outside. It disappeared. I called down to my son to see if he was blasting Blue Rodeo while studying. What? What’s Blue Rodeo? So, no. I asked my husband if he could hear it. What? No. I walked into the kitchen and, indeed, all I could hear was Signed, Sealed, Delivered. No Blue Rodeo. Back to the couch. Oh, baby you try. Tryyyyyy.

This was more than having a song stuck in my head, this was music that I could hear and, apparently, I was the only one hearing it.

Isn’t that a sign of something? I was honestly starting to get worried. I can hear music that no one else can. Then, I noticed something flash on the TV; my husband, in an attempt not to see anything about the Patriots game he was recording to watch in its entirety after dinner, had flipped the channel to a music one, and had turned the sound way down…but not apparently to zero. I was hearing the very soft music on the speaker beside the couch.

Well, that was a relief.

Also a relief; I had my first salon visit in over six months. Here’s the Before, During, and After:

I know what you’re going to say: it’s dark. Mmmhmmm. It’s actually way darker than I like; my hair therapist had changed colour lines and warned me that my usual colour might need “tweaking” and here we are. This dark colour is very similar to my “birth” colour (as opposed to “natural” as my natural colour is grey-white), which I haven’t seen in 25 years or so. Honestly, I find it startling every time I look in the mirror.

Well, as my friend Monique (HI MONIQUE) said, colour fades over time and I colour every four weeks or so; this is a temporary thing. It’s not like I just got a face tattoo or anything. Who knows, maybe I’ll grow to like it, but in any case, I have four boxes of Garnier in my cupboard from when they were on sale at Superstore for $4.99. Also, the cut made it feel so much healthier and bouncier, which should get me through the next six months or so.

Pandemic Reading

What happens when a father’s dying wish is for his family to sit shiva for him? A lot. This was a mixture of Wow, That’s Sad, and Horrified Laughing Out Loud, and I Didn’t Predict The End. In other words, worth a read. According to my Instagram friends, this was made into a movie.

A baby girl is abandoned at the YMCA. I am going to tell you that this is a beautifully written book, not unlike Room, wherein if you start it, you need to finish it for the message of hope and love. HOWEVER, like Room, it is extremely upsetting and disturbing and difficult to read. There’s your caveat.

Speaking of difficult to read, I picked this up as it was written by a friend’s sister-in-law. It deals with the death of the author’s sister and best friend – the sister, suffering from extreme mental illness commits suicide, and the best friend succumbs to cancer. It’s a very raw and emotional read.

Whew, after all those books of death and despair, I’m going to read something very very light. I will let you know what exactly I’m reading next week. xo