Category Archives: Weather or not

November Bits and Bobs

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My son was telling me about a throwback party he attended at the university bar; the throwback era, he said was mostly between 2012 and 2014. I was momentarily stunned into silence, and then had him list off a few of the songs that they had played: a lot of Pitbull and the Black-Eyed Peas, the notable era exception being the 2005 hit Hips Don’t Lie by Shakira. Shakira Shakira! All the songs he mentioned are on my Nicole’s Workout Spotify playlist, and they are all songs that I consider to be “modern.”

This reminded me of an 80s Retro party I myself went to at the bar at my university, and the year was probably 1995, so I guess the years go by and yet nothing changes. Still. At the time, I remember dancing to My Sharona and thinking how fun it was to dance to such retro music, and here is my son, grooving to Mr Worldwide. Sunrise, sunset.

We have a houseguest this week! My younger son’s best friend is visiting from Calgary, and he scheduled his visit to coordinate with the ending of my son’s seasonal golf course job as well as my older son’s reading week, so the house is full and so, if you will forgive the sentimentality, is my heart. My older son’s roommate just happens to be a good friend of both boys, so he has been over here as well and I am in my element, feeding everyone in a “Eat, Eat!” kind of way.

Speaking of my younger son, once again he has decided to grow a moustache for the month of November. Typically he only shaves every four or five days, meaning that he usually has a stubbly scruff most of the time, but now he is clean-shaven except for his old-timey Clark Gable-style moustache. As always I am a strong proponent of body autonomy, even in the facial hair department, but also, Clark Gable-style moustache. Remember that Jimmy Buffett song Pencil Thin Moustache? It’s not unlike that.

Rest in peace, Jimmy Buffett. He sure brought a lot of joy to this world, and particularly to me. He also brought us the song Why Don’t We Get Drunk And Screw which I secretly wanted to play at my wedding, but did not. Imagine how funny that would have been, though. I just got a water bed, it’s filled up for me and you. What a glorious time piece of a song. The 70s is my favourite era, music-wise: soft rock, yacht rock, cock rock, Motown, and, my top genre, disco. It would be very, very difficult for me to find a song I do not bop around to happily that was created in the 70s. Even the ones with terrible lyrics and misogyny I will happily sing and kitchen disco to, notably When You’re In Love With A Beautiful Woman and If You Want To Be Happy. I joked about having the latter played at our wedding and my husband was horrified at the very thought. It would be a fun ironic song if it wasn’t blatantly mean-spirited. Still, I will groove to it.

I was grooving down the pathway the other day and I stopped to talk to a gentleman I frequently talk to, who just so happens to look exactly like Kenny G. He and I are probably going to one day spin off this planet with our excessive morning positivity; he’s a kindred spirit, Kenny G is, is what I’m saying. He gestured to the path in front of me saying “Are you enjoying our Golden Mile?” and I was so charmed by this turn of phrase.

The path has been carpeted with leaves, and somehow Rex managed to walk an entire 90 minutes with a leaf on his head. I guess he was feeling Fall Festive.

Less festive is the fact that the dog park has been very, very muddy of late. I stopped to speak with yet another gentleman on the path, while our black and white dogs sniffed each other. The gentleman laughed at Rex’s paws, which were completely covered with mud. “Rex! Your boots!” he said, and I replied with a “This is the problem: no white shoes after Labour Day!” The man looked at me in the most puzzled way, with a completely furrowed brow, and then smiled and nodded as he said his goodbyes. Later, I asked my husband if men do not know about the Labour Day White Shoe rule and he replied with what are you talking about, so I guess that answers that, at least in the Boyhouse.

Weekly Reading

Pineapple Street. Have you ever picked up a book based solely on hearing other people mention the title, without looking at the synopsis or anything about it at all, and then, on starting it, realize that it’s completely different from what you might imagine? This was exactly my experience with Pineapple Street. In my mind it was something exotic, maybe something tropical, maybe women in a different country and their lives? Well. I did not realize Pineapple Street is in Brooklyn Heights and that this book would be about an ultrarich, old money family. I guess that is exotic in its own way, there’s no rich like NYC rich, am I right? But I have to say, while it’s a readable and easy book to digest, the writing is pretty lazy. All the characters are completely one dimensional and then most of them do a 180 near the end of the book with no nuance whatsoever. The theme is millenial heirs of old money, and it’s like the author thought “okay, three kids, we will make one of them represent the millenials who want to give away all their fortune because they disagree with inheriting large sums of money, one of them will just enjoy the money and work in the family business, and the last one, let’s make her someone who gave up her career to have kids and wants more, more, more money. Great, we covered it all.” Like I said, this is readable and for those of us who like to read about fashion and tablescapes, it’s kind of fun, but it’s not profound or nuanced or going to set the world on fire. I later learned that the author is actually a publishing executive so, you know, that answers that.

Please Don’t Sit On My Bed In Your Outside Clothes. This hilarious, smart, and thoughtful book of essays was written in 2020, so it definitely has a Quarantine Flavour to it. This woman has had a very, very different life experience from me, which makes this all the more eye-opening and thought-provoking. She has a way of starting with a hilariously shallow topic, that suddenly delves deeper, having me think of things in a totally different way, i.e., the concept of self-care. The essay that I think will stay with me the longest is the one about performative allyship, which is something that I have been thinking about since the summer of 2020. Actually, I’ve probably been thinking about the concept of people using social media to “raise awareness” without doing anything meaningful since the days of women posting their bra colours on Facebook to “raise awareness” about breast cancer. Friends, we are all aware. But what are we going to do about it? One takeaway from this is, in terms of allyship, that it can be actively harmful to repost violent viral videos. Marginalized people do not need to be inundated with that in the name of “raising awareness.” Anyway, this was a very enlightening – and did I mention, very funny? – read.

Some of you will remember a while back that I was interviewed as a guest post on my good friend Elisabeth’s blog (HI ELISABETH); sadly, that blog was deleted and my interview, including the story about topless sunbathing, was lost forever. Well, the happy news is that Elisabeth RE-interviewed me and it’s up there today, so please go check it out. Another piece of happy news is that my friend and writing support Laura Bray has a substack and this month she is offering 20% off paid subscriptions, in honour of her birthday month (HAPPY BIRTHDAY LAURA!). Do go check her out as she is a gifted writer and an all-round lovely person.

On that note, have a beautiful week, friends! xo

Nicole’s Favourite Things: The Oooh, It’s October Edition

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At the risk of sounding like an incredibly demented Little Miss Sunshine, I do not have a Least Favourite Month. I don’t have a Most Favourite Month either; I love April because it’s my birthday, and December because of Christmas, I love July and August because of the heat and summery vibes and I love September because it’s my younger son’s birthday and, together with January, there are those fun Fresh Start Feelings. I love May and June because of gardening, and March because it’s my older son’s birthday and our wedding anniversary. Even the less-popular months like November and February I love; the latter because I like to celebrate Galentines’, Valentines’, and eating half-price chocolate, and the former because of Tiny Secret Festive Season. October, of course, is a great month for Halloween and all the festivity that comes with that, including, but not limited to, fun sized candy.

But in my mind, due to a lifetime lived in Calgary, October is the beginning of winter. The leaves were always blown off the trees, meaning that the trees would be naked until May. It would always snow. The constant wind meant that wearing lip gloss and having my hair down at the same time was hazardous. My whole life I have always secretly wondered at those people who are strongly Fall People; it always seemed aspirational to me, while I dug out my winter coat and boots, to be walking around in October in only a sweater and scarf, with leaves still on the trees, eating fresh apples and looking at pumpkin displays that hadn’t been frozen and thawed so many times that they turned into mush.

But wow! Do I ever love fall here! October is gorgeous; even on the rainy and cool days, it’s beautiful. I’m turning into a Fall Person! And so of course it’s time for…

Nicole’s Favourite Things: The Oooh, It’s October Edition

If You Leave Me Now

Now, of course I greatly enjoyed the fall colours when I lived in Calgary, of course I did. Every year for approximately two to three weeks, I would walk around like the aforementioned demented Little Miss Sunshine and photograph the changing trees against the blue sky backdrop. Then there would be a hard frost and an enormous windstorm and the trees would be mere sticks against that blue sky backdrop. And then it would snow.

You guys, not only are the leaves in full, glorious colour right now but they have been for over a month AND there are some trees on which the leaves are STILL GREEN. What is this magic? It is so gorgeous, I can’t even. I CAN’T EVEN. I have gone from demented Little Miss Sunshine to possibly scaring fellow walkers with my enthusiasm for fall foliage. The vineyard is golden, trees are all green, yellow, orange, and red, RED, you guys. I can’t get over it. I actually phoned my husband the other day, while driving, to shriek about the alternating colours of the trees near the library. I would have taken a picture but you know, I was driving.

The Book Of Love

Speaking of the library, after my rough start I am getting really comfortable with my local branch. I still have my CPL account for ebooks, but I am finding the selection here for paper books is quite good. I went in the other day to pick up a hold, and ended up cleaning out almost their entire shelf of “Staff Picks.” As I went to the counter with my arms stacked, I mentioned somewhat sheepishly and guiltily that I had done so, and the librarian checking me out cheerfully said That’s what they are there for! We will just put in new ones!

Also, the loan period is four weeks, which seems gloriously generous and justifies my giant, greedy piles.

People Of The World, Spice Up Your Life

If you are not following my friend Suzanne’s blog (HI SUZANNE) you are sadly missing out: not only is she an incredibly gifted writer who is an absolute delight to read, but she also frequently posts recipes and dinner ideas. Last fall she posted the Perfect Fall Cookie and my goodness, friends, you need this cookie in your life.

This particular one was more chocolate chip than cookie, which should be Cookie Goals.

Now, because I’m me, I made a few changes: I added vanilla and omitted the cloves, and I did not want eight giant cookies, I wanted many, smaller cookies, and so I just adjusted the baking time accordingly. They were perfection, all the beauty of fall in cookie form.

Kale-ing Me Softly

Back in the spring, my sister-in-law thought I would be sad, moving to Kelowna, particularly since I would miss out on a whole year of gardening, and so she planted some cherry tomatoes and kale for me in my mother-in-law’s garden. You may remember that my mother-in-law is next door, but what I haven’t mentioned is that the garden will be mostly my responsibility next year. I have BIG PLANS, including raised beds for all the veggies, but in the meantime, I had these lovely cherry tomatoes and kale that were just for me.

The kale is STILL GOING STRONG. I have had so many cuttings of it this year, and it’s still going! We’ve been enjoying giant salads every Sunday dinner since we arrived here, and it’s been so prolific that my husband MAY have hinted that he’s tiring somewhat of kale. Well, too bad for him, because we still have some in the garden! Plus, my favourite farm market still has them in giant bunches 2/$5, so get ready for more Vitamin K!

That sounds like a joke, but kale really is high in Vitamin K. Moving on!

Snack-ual Healing

Let’s stay with the topic of food for a while; I have two items that I am obsessed with. Now, the first one I am a little shy to tell you about, as I JUST wrote about the madness of diet culture and my belief that we CANNOT assign some kind of morality to food choices, we just can’t. It’s absolutely wrong and destructive and I WILL NOT DO IT.

But OMG, this popcorn. Look, I know. I know the name is stupid and goes against every single thing I just said, but this popcorn is SO good. Could I pop my own corn and toss it in a coconut oil and nutritional yeast concoction to make something similar, precluding me from financially supporting a snack food company called Lesser Evil? I sure could. Will I? NO, because this is so delicious and also I make every single thing from scratch around here, just let me have this. Let me just have something easy.

I picked this up at Costco on a whim; I was hungry, and also I was stuck in a cart traffic jam, waiting for a dozen people to get their free sample of crackers and file out of the aisle so I could move on with my life. I saw this and was intrigued, and let me tell you, it is every bit as amazing as I could have ever hoped. It’s spicy and sweet, and tart and sour all at the same time. It’s like an incredible chewy candy, but it’s fruit. It is so good and I plan on grabbing several bags the next time I spot this. Of course, this is Costco we are talking about, and so who knows if I will ever see it again.

Smooth Operator

If you have been reading this blog for any length of time, you will know that I have been a Neutrogena devotee for years, decades even. You will also know that any skin care or beauty product must be used by me for a minimum of three months, and must show some kind of benefit, for it to be featured in my Favourites. Well! Let me tell you about this:

I started using Neutrogena Retinol Plus about six months ago, both the eye cream and the regenerating night cream. I was initially attracted to it because it comes with a warning label: NOT FOR BEGINNERS. This cracks me up so much, but it also indicates that it involves some pretty potent retinol. Well, this is not my first retinol rodeo, people, I’ve been riding that retinol bull for some time now.

Does it work, you may be asking, and the answer is I think so? But it’s impossible to tell, really, because time keeps marching forward and I do not live in the multiverse, people, and so there’s no Nicole Without Retinol to compare to. But I do think that my makeup-free face is less haggard-looking than it was when I started; then again, when I started I was in the midst of preparing for a move and an empty nest and my husband’s retirement, and was having a nervous breakdown every other day, so who can say what the cream is doing. It could be working OR I could just not be under an unbelievable amount of stress, who knows. What I know for sure is that my forehead lines are a permanent fixture and nothing short of surgery or massive filler injections is going to change that, so que sera sera.

Welcome To Her Dollhouse

Do you need a little pick-me-up? Of course you do! Well, let me tell you about my lovely friend Michelle (HI MICHELLE). She is an artist and a crafter and she has been working on a dollhouse for a while now, and let me tell you, it is the MOST incredibly adorable thing you have ever seen. Like, I have actual fantasies of shrinking myself down to live in that dollhouse. Every single new addition is better than the last, and I honestly feel like I might spin off the planet whenever I look at it, it is SO cute. I go and look at her photos at least once a week, when I need cheering or when I just want to see how the doll-half lives. THERE ARE GNOMES, PEOPLE. I find when I’m looking at it I am barely coherent because LITTLE TINY ROLLING PIN AHHHHHH.

OOTM

Look at me, swanning around with no coat, just a jaunty sweater and blanket scarf! This is Peak Fall Fashion Goals for me.

Rex wants you to see his white tuft, which matches my outfit.

These pants, boots, and top have all been discussed at length before, I am sure, but what I want to talk about is this cream poncho-like sweater. I bought it from lululemon at least ten years ago, and while I love it, I don’t wear it often. Mostly, because it’s cream and I almost always immediately spill something on myself whenever I don light-coloured clothing. But there is a funny story attached to this sweater, and that is that I was wearing it at the playground, underneath my winter coat, while waiting for the kids to finish sledding after school one day. My friend Helena (HI HELENA) came up to me and pulled me aside to tell me that she thought I should know I had toilet paper hanging down in the back.

Now, first of all, god bless everyone who tells people things like this, whether it’s a toilet paper mishap, lipstick on the teeth, chocolate on the face, or skirts tucked into pantyhose. These people are doing the lord’s work. But the thing was, I did NOT have toilet paper stuck in my waistband and hanging down below my winter coat, it was just that the jaunty edges of the poncho-like sweater gave the ILLUSION of having toilet paper stuck in my waistband and hanging down below my winter coat, and I think we can all agree this is not a look anyone would aspire to.

Therefore, I swore I would never wear that sweater again underneath any outerwear, and since I lived in Calgary until three months ago, this meant that my opportunities to wear it were greatly reduced. Calgary is not a place that really encourages a person to go anywhere without a jacket. But now! Now I can wear it in all its glory, I just have to make sure I’m not going to immediately spill wine or salsa on it, which is what happened the last time I wore it. Resolve Stain Remover: also a Nicole’s Favourite Thing.

Hilariously, one of my Favourite podcasts, Nobody Panic, released an episode this week called How To Be A Basic Autumn Bitch and it spoke to me, people. It spoke to me. I hope you are enjoying October too, and if you have Favourites to share, I’d love to hear them, as always. xo

Nicole’s Favourite Things: The Wake Me Up When September…Wait, September Is Ending Edition

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What a month September has been; oddly enough, it simultaneously feels like it flew by, and that it was three months long. We packed so much in, and now my already tenuous sense of time is completely warped. Everything already feels like it happened so long ago. Was it only three and a half weeks ago that my older son moved out? Were my parents really here only last Monday? Was my husband’s retirement party only one week ago today? Was my younger son’s 18th birthday less than two weeks ago? Did I get Rex groomed two and a half weeks ago and his clean fur lasted only two hours? Yes to all of those things.

I have been in Kelowna for two and a half months now, and I have to tell you, I really love it here. I am a person who really loves being outside and who enjoys the beauty of nature, and Kelowna is really gorgeous, with pretty much perfect weather. Even when it rains, it’s beautiful. I mean, look at this double rainbow I spotted from my window this week!

My husband, who grew up here, always said that September was his favourite month. For me, growing up in Calgary, September was a bit of a gamble; the leaves could be still beautifully coloured, on the trees, or they could be blown off in a massive windstorm, resulting in naked trees until the following May. The days could be sunny and warm, or they could be cold, windy, and possibly snowing. There was no telling what the week could bring; too long, didn’t read, wear layers, make sure the winter coats are at the ready. But here, September means cool, crisp mornings with sunny, warm afternoons. We’ve had some rainy days, but the temperature is still so mild that an unlined rain jacket is all that is needed. Some of the trees are changing but many are still green. It’s just full of beauty, and I am really happy here.

You never know, right? You never know what a new place is going to be like until you’re in it, and certainly there have been some adjustments to be made – I spent a lot of time on my yoga mat, meditating in a what lens am I viewing this through, we can control our own responses but not other people kind of way – but I’m happy with our move, and I wanted to share some of my favourite things about this month.

Nicole’s Favourite Things: The Wake Me Up When…Wait, September Is Ending Edition

To Market, To Market

Kelowna is a hotbed of fruit and vegetable production, and this time of year is just rife with so much fresh produce. There are what are called Farm Markets on every corner, it seems, which sell all manner of local goods. I have discovered my favourite one and I visit there weekly to get the freshest local fruit you can imagine.

McIntosh apples have been in abundance this month, my favourite apple. Tree ripened fruit, sign me up! Also, my favourite Farm Market is selling kale at $5 for two bunches, and those bunches are absolutely enormous. Like, Fill Up All Available Lidded Bowls enormous.

It’s Gourd Season, motherfuckers! Decorative and otherwise.

Pumpkins for DAYS, people, and all locally grown. Listen, for a Calgary girl who has never successfully grown a gourd, this is pretty incredible.

My older son was over for dinner, and upon seeing my bowl he said “It’s Decorative Gourd Season already?” Usually I wait until October, but these little cuties were too good to pass up, and only $0.75 each!

Looking Out My Back Door

One of the most incredible things about living on a vineyard is actually living on a vineyard. Most of the grapes are used by the winery above us, but there are a few rows of Concords and Sheridans, and I do not think I will ever get tired of stepping out the back door to snip myself a snack.

There is a short window of Concord Grape Eating, Before They Get Too Soft, and I am doing my best to keep up.

I Didn’t Want To Love You

One strange, possibly surprising little quirk about me is that when it comes to beauty products, I absolutely hate free samples. I think they are wasteful and environmentally unfriendly, in their tiny little packages, as well as useless. How can one tell if a product is going to work for them from one use? In my mind, most products need to be used consistently to see results, one dab of cream or hair mask is just not going to cut it. I am a product monogamist and I’m not interested in trying things willy-nilly. Why would I engage in a one-night stand when I’m happily married? Does the one-night stand understand how important Top Gun is to me and will possibly don a flight suit? No? Then I am NOT INTERESTED.

So when I got a notification from the Nutrafol people that I was receiving a sample of shampoo and conditioner in my spring shipment, I was annoyed, and resigned myself to either donating or angrily throwing out the sample. What I didn’t realize until the shipment arrived was that they sent me full-size bottles to try. Well! That’s different.

Here’s the thing: Nutrafol alone is already expensive, although I can tell you right now it really does work for hair loss. This is not sponsored, obviously, nothing is for sale on this blog although, if Nutrafol DID sponsor me, I would totally take it, we all have our price, but what I’m saying is that it works. I have been taking it for ten months now and my hair is significantly thicker.

But it’s expensive, especially for Canadians who are not only swimming against the exchange rate, but also have to pay international shipping. The last thing I wanted to do was add ridiculously pricey shampoo and conditioner to my already burgeoning hair budget. Listen, Nutrafol is not dumb. They are a 1970s cocaine dealer, giving me a couple of bumps before I take my platform shoes and sparkly jumpsuit to the dance floor, only to have me coming back to them, wrecked and desperate, with mascara smudges and missing a shoe, weeks later. The first one is free, and then all goes to hell.

What I’m saying is that this shampoo and conditioner is really, really good. In combing out my wet hair, perhaps one or two strands are left in my comb. The scent is gloriously citrusy, and my hair is bouncy and healthy-looking. I am still using my free bottles, and I haven’t decided if I will purchase more when they are gone; I keep hoping that they’ll send me more for free. I will keep you posted, and in the meantime, I’ll toss my hair around while grooving to Get Down Tonight.

The Eyes Have It

Speaking of product monogamy, long-time readers will know that I have exclusively used Maybelline’s The Falsies Lash Lift mascara for years, and before that, The Falsies. If it isn’t broke, let’s not fix it. It works great, it washes off easily, and although I don’t think anyone would mistake my eyelashes for actual falsies, I am happy with them.

Since I love this line so much, I was tempted when I saw that The Falsies has a new product, called The Surreal. I decided to give it a try.

I don’t think the end result is very different from the Lash Lift – and both are superior to The Falsies, in my mind – but the Surreal seems much less prone to smudging. It seems to last a lot longer without giving raccoon eyes, which is an important consideration, particularly for those of us who just naturally seem to have raccoon eyes and bags underneath that should be really checked in at the airport, rather than carried on.

The downside to less smudging is that it is a little bit more involved to remove – it requires a bit of extra effort, but nothing that I would consider a hurdle for purchase.

Outfit of the Month

As I mentioned in my last post, last Thursday was my husband’s retirement party, and I figured I would just wear one of my many little black dresses. When this was communicated to my husband, well, I won’t say he begged me to buy something new, that would be an exaggeration, but he strongly encouraged me to buy something new. I think his exact words were “For god’s sake, Nicole, stop being so fucking cheap! You can’t wear the same dress to every event for a decade!” WELL I NEVER. For one thing, I have NOT worn the same dress to every event for a decade, but I have reworn several of my dresses several times, and while I think that is great, and that I am not being fucking cheap but merely being in keeping with my own personal mindful consumption goals that were renewed after reading Unraveling, I do see his point. The dress I was planning to wear I purchased in 2014.

So I took a reconnaissance trip to the one mall in Kelowna, and found the perfect dress at the first store I went to, which is how I like to shop. Get in, get out.

Isn’t it cute? It’s a little lower-cut than I generally prefer, but it felt simultaneously sexy and classy. The heels I have had since probably 2014, and wow, am I unused to wearing heels. Our Uber driver let us off a block and a half from our destination to avoid us sitting in traffic for 20 minutes, and normally I would welcome the extra steps. NOT SO IN THESE SHOES. My feet felt like they were going to snap off at the ankles and I would have to tap tap tap my way into the event on my sheared-off ankle bones. Still, they went nicely with the dress.

That wrap dress wraps up all my favourite things from this busy, busy month! What are you loving in September? Tell me everything. xo

Playing The Fiddle

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Weekly Reading

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

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

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

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

Acclimatizing

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Are You Feeling Hot! Hot! Hot!

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

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

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

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

International Costco Woman of Mystery

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

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

Hi Neighbourino

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

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

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

Bye Bye Birdie

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

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

Weekly Reading

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

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

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

Social Butterfly and Boxes, Boxes, Boxes

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Nothing motivates a person so much as having a firm deadline, am I right? The past couple of weeks have been a whirlwind of cleaning and decluttering, donating and packing, and squeezing in as many social visits as I possibly can. And speaking of motivation, nothing lights a fire with regards to actually scheduling social visits, as opposed to the old “we should get together sometime soon” like leaving the province. I feel very popular these days! A woman, who I had not seen since 2019, dropped by my house for a surprise visit, which is not my favourite, and said that even though we hadn’t seen each other in years, she’s sad that I’m leaving because she thought that I’d just always be here, in this house, anytime she wanted to see me. That made me feel less popular, and more boring and staid, although I guess I’m morphing into some unpredictable wild child, leaving the house I’ve been in for twenty-three years.

I think that old trope about friends coming into your life for a reason, season, or lifetime is very true. A couple of weeks ago we had friends over for dinner – our last dinner party in our house. These are friends that are more like family, friends for life; we regularly share meals and vacations, and we have that rare unicorn of a situation where the kids all get along AND the adults all get along. It seems with couple friends that this isn’t always the case, but all eight of us love each other and enjoy each other more and more with the passing years. I found a very special package of napkins that I had bought years ago and I thought why am I saving these, let’s use them!

There’s even a drink recipe on the back.

Our older kids share a birthday – they are only two hours apart in age – but their youngest just celebrated her 17th, so I decided to make her a cake in her favourite flavours, peanut butter and chocolate. This is a cake I had made before, and, as an aside, my son reminded me that I had a goal to make every single cake in this book and I have only made two, so I need to get moving on that. In any case, I had made it before, so I was very confident in the final product.

And at this point I will say I am not a person who gets stressed about having dinner guests. I am generally a very relaxed hostess who just wants everyone to have a full glass of whatever they want, and the rest falls into place. I think I inherited this trait from my mother, who wouldn’t blink at having twenty people over for a meal and who I remember hosting many enormous holiday meals in a completely calm manner, including, when my brothers each got married, hosting fifteen and twenty-eight houseguests, respectively. When I was a kid, I could invite any friend over for any meal with zero notice, and she’d just ask me to go grab some more potatoes. So I tend to be pretty calm and I figure the food will be fine, and people are here to visit anyway.

But I did want the cake to be nice for our girl, and I was sure it would be. I was humming around the kitchen, and thought the cake was chilled and set enough to have the springform pan’s sides removed. At this point in the movie of my life, ominous music would start playing. I cheerfully removed the ring and, friends, it was a disaster. Immediately the top ganache started breaking apart and the weight of it made the fluffy filling, for lack of a better word, explode in a slow-motion manner. At that moment my husband came inside from checking the barbeque and I could only scream “The cake! The cake!” in the manner of that guy from Fantasy Island when he saw the plane. He hurried over and together we jammed the springform sides back on as the peanut butter filling spread everywhere. I was in a low-level state of Cake Panic. I never really worry about what I am serving my guests, for better or for worse, but I did have an image in my mind for my favourite girl, for our last of many dinners and visits in our house. After we had jammed the sides of the springform back on, I put it in the freezer, and this was the end result:

The birthday girl, bless her heart, thought it looked Really Cool That Way, Nicole, and it was honestly really delicious. I think the freezing actually improved the whole cake, all around, and I am going to remember that for next time. Freeze BEFORE removing the sides.

Speaking of my mom, I visited my parents for a couple of days and the guys joined in for the Canada Day holiday. I was reminded of a conversation my friend Tara (HI TARA) and I had, lo these many years ago, about visiting our parents. At the time we both had very tiny babies and equally tiny toddlers, and life felt as chaotic as that sounds. I recall mentioning to Tara taking the boys over to visit my parents and marvelling at their house as an oasis of peace, tidiness, and calm. It was like this whole other world, that wasn’t awash in diapers and toys and tears, and my mother would be calmly putting together a balanced meal, whereas I would have one child in the Baby Bjorn and another at my feet, trying to figure out how to cobble together a half-decent meal before the baby needed feeding and the toddler needed bedtime. Tara nodded and said “It’s like finding out how the other half lives,” and I felt that, again, at this time in my life, deeply as I was at my parents’ house this weekend. There aren’t boxes and donation piles everywhere! There are no endless to-do lists and balancing eating everything in the freezer and cupboards with are we running out of coffee, omg. I mean, this is what my front hallway has looked like for a week and a half, waiting for a donation pickup:

And the basement seems to have exploded:

But I had a great time at my parents’, even though one evening we were under a tornado warning. My mom and I popped over to my friend Merry’s lovely little store, original home of Salvadore the Gnome. Merry’s Mercantile carries giftware and clothing as well as a ton of wonderful vintage items, and one of the first things I saw was this:

GRIMACE! Is it a sign? I did not buy him, nor did I buy the cookbook by the 80s TV star Wok With Yan, although I was very tempted.

I was also tempted to buy a bandanna for Rex that stated “I’m the reason we can’t have nice things,” but, as appropriate as that is, I did not because I figured he would probably, ironically enough, destroy it. Merry did mention she had one last garden gnome who needed a home, and the last time I heard that phrase I ended up with a 95 pound ball of love, so of course I took the gnome home, although he’s going to be in a box for a little while. There will be a time after this! At one point boxes will not be my life, and Gustaf the Gnome will be presiding over a garden patch.

Weekly Reading

Tuesday Nights In 1980. This was a really good book about the NYC art scene in 1980, which is something I do not know much about. It deals with an art critic who has a special ability to see the world in colours and flavours, a fledgling artist from Argentina who is about to hit the big time, and a woman from Idaho who is trying to life the artist life in the gritty city. It took some turns I really did not expect, and is a compelling story about, thematically enough, chosen and blood family.

Unraveling. I think Jamie (HI JAMIE) had recommended this book, and to be honest, the premise did not sound promising. Starting in 2020, the author decides to write about making a sweater from scratch, and I do mean from scratch. She learns how to shear a sheep and does so, then washes, cards, and spins the wool. She makes her own natural dyes and colours the yarn, finally knitting it into a sweater. Pandemic projects, am I right? But the point was to show how much labour goes into the making of a sweater, and it was honestly fascinating. The book takes many sidebars to show just how much traditional labour – generally women’s – went into the making of textiles and clothing. The most fascinating example was one I had heard before, which is that the most valuable item on a Viking ship was the sail. The amount of labour that went into one sail is estimated to be two women-years of work. In medieval times, women of all classes would spend the majority of their time spinning and weaving, and the word spinster meant a woman untethered by husband or children, who could spend extra time doing these very important and valuable jobs. Having a spinster in the house was not a burden but instead was valuable. The book also goes into the absolute environmental disaster that is our textile and clothing industry, and questions why we think so much about what we put into our bodies, but not at all about what we put ON them, from an ecological point of view. Once you know this, you really can’t un-know it, and I have been thinking a lot about the impact our consumer choices have on this world. It’s really shameful and we have to do better as a whole and as individuals. I’ll be thinking about this for a while. This was a really thoughtful, interesting, well-researched and well-written book.

Now that I’m back from “where the other half lives” I need to get back to reality. Back to boxes and everything else, and I hope you all have a much-less hectic and stressful week than the one I am facing. Be well, friends! xo

More Screaming Into The Void

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Thank you all for your kind and supportive comments regarding my son’s dental surgery. He is booked for the second surgery, and I was happily surprised to hear that it will take no more than twenty minutes under general anesthetic; I am still salty that we didn’t do this in the FIRST place, but the best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago, etcetera.

When I asked the nurse on the phone several spastic questions, she was very calming and made me feel like a) my son’s particular issues might be problematic in a regular dental office, but are par for the course in their specialist’s office, and b) I SHOULD HAVE INVESTIGATED THIS IN THE FIRST PLACE. But again. Planting trees, we don’t know what we don’t know, and I will probably never trust a regular dentist for advice again.

I am a person who generally likes Mondays. Monday is generally a good day for me: I have a morning to accomplish things and then an afternoon class with a lovely group of ladies, we have pasta on Monday nights, and I am well-rested from the weekend. This past Monday, though. I felt like Garfield, or these guys:

Honestly, it was a ridiculous day of frustration. The dental office and oral surgeon both kept phoning me, while I was walking Rex, to say they had emailed over various forms and paperwork that needed to be responded to, but I had received nothing. My personal email was working fine, but our family email – which I use for all such things – kept giving me error messages. Finally I contacted our internet provider, who informed me that there had been a password compromise, so they locked my account. I mean, good? But also, I would have liked to know that?

The fellow on my Help Chat had me log into my account on their website, which required a two-step verification process; the authentication code was sent to…my email that was not working. There was no way around this. EMAIL OR NOTHING. Eventually, after much wrangling we did get around it, and all was resolved, but it took a significant amount of time and as soon as I finished the mountains of paperwork I needed to leave to teach my class.

I was feeling fairly agitated by this time because MORE DENTAL SURGERY, plus all the email issues, plus filling in all the forms and finding all the cards with all the various health numbers on them, which needed to be done IMMEDIATELY. Because of my preparation for my flying birdies, my sons carry their health care cards on their persons, but luckily Past Nicole had anticipated issues and had photos of the health care cards on my phone, which I finally remembered. Finishing all this, I zipped over to the community centre, thinking how nice it was that the heat was finally fixed, and that it was a beautiful warm day; I expected the centre to be fairly warm and was dressed accordingly in short sleeves and capri-length leggings.

Imagine my surprise, then, when I entered the room to discover it was freezing, and not just freezing, but Freezing With Blasts Of Freezing Air. The air-conditioning was on full blast, and when I asked the women in the office if we could possibly turn off the air-conditioning, they replied that they could not. It had been jammed on full blast since the previous Thursday, and no one could figure out how to turn it off. A service call, they said, had been requested.

I think if someone had told me all of the issues affecting my classes in the past two months, I would not have believed them. I would not have believed that a community centre could be shut down completely for six weeks to work on the HVAC system, I would not have believed that after those six weeks I and my fellow teachers would be required to teach for two weeks in a hall with no heat, I would not have believed that my unheated yoga classes would be punctuated with the sound of drilling into metal and that I would have to beg the workmen to please, PLEASE stop drilling for five minutes so my students could have a peaceful savasana. After all that, I certainly would not have believed that I would be faced with an air-conditioned room that no one could possibly bear being in. I just stood and stared forlornly at the thermostat for a long time, randomly pushing seemingly useless buttons, until the centre manager came up to me and said that, happily, the boardroom was empty that afternoon and the air conditioning didn’t seem to be on in that room, so if I could help her move chairs we could hold the class in there.

It was cozy and wonderful, and afterwards I felt much more calm and ready to tackle life, until I got home and chaos seemed to follow me. Every single task I needed to do took five times longer than usual because of small complications arising – from emails to event planning, from trying to activate a card online to making dinner, every little thing was way harder than it needed to be, for no reason that I could tell except that maybe I had angered the universe at some point and was being smited.

It’s a good thing I am not one of those people who think that Monday sets the tone for the week. I simply waved the white flag, ate some leftover Mother’s Day cake, and went to bed, thinking, like Scarlett O’Hara, that after all, tomorrow is another day.

Weekly Reading

The House On Mango Street. I really loved this little book of tiny vignettes about a Latina girl growing up in – and getting out of – Chicago. I loved that in the prologue, the author talked about wanting to write for people who are busy working for a living, who don’t have much time to read and are tired. Each story vignette is very short, and that’s why. It’s an absolute delight of a book.

My Body. After reading No Filter, my friend Cherie (HI CHERIE) recommended this to me as another book of memoir essays about a model and the modeling industry. I had no idea who the author of this memoir was. That has never stopped me before! If you also don’t know, she’s a famous swimsuit model and actor, who became famous after appearing in the video for Blurred Lines. Funnily enough, I was talking about this book to my husband, who DID know who she was, which was probably the most surprising thing I learned this month. I liked this collection about the life of a model and the bad men who take advantage of them, but I think what was most interesting were her essays about being an Instagram influencer. To the outside world, being an influencer might be perceived as an easy way to make money, but my goodness, it is NOT. It is a job, and not one that I would like, involving a lot of work and obsessing over screens, likes, and comments. 

Thankfully, the rest of the week was much more smooth, productive, and happy than Monday portended, albeit smoky, and it included some gardening, long chats with friends, a birthday dinner for my mom, my thousandth – thousandth! – Peloton ride, and a freshly groomed and ready for summer Rex. This week is my son’s graduation ceremony, filled with all the fun and social things that go with it. I hope you all have a beautiful week! xo