Category Archives: Weather or not

Nicole’s Favourite Things: The It’s Fall, Y’all Edition

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We have had the most beautiful October with the longest stretch of sunny and warm weather; it’s been the kind of weather that evokes that Anne Shirley quote – I’m glad I live in a world where there are Octobers – which, believe me, is not a normal state of affairs in Calgary. Our first snowfall came fully 2/3 into the month, which is late for us. Here are our Halloween decorations before the snow:

And here is the after:

This is fall in Calgary! You just never know what the day might bring. All of this means that it’s time to pull out the thigh high wool socks, the bumwarmers, and the winter boots. It’s also time for a Favourite Things!

Nicole’s Favourite Things: The It’s Fall, Y’all Edition

It’s Decorative Gourd Season, Motherfuckers

Well, you didn’t think that I would get through an October Favourite Things post without talking about decorative gourds, did you, motherfuckers?

After last year’s fiasco with local wildlife stealing my little gourds and eating them, I decided to keep my miniature gourds inside. Those soft crafted pumpkins were gifted to me by a friend (HI TARYN) and regularly get wagged off the piano stool by SOMEONE. The piano stool was my great-grandmother’s, and I only recently incorporated it into my main-floor décor.

The Girls

Sometimes I can really visualize my future self, and one of those iterations of my future self is Crazy Plant Lady. I mean, I can really see it; me, at an advanced age, lipstick on, wearing flowing black old-lady tops, talking to houseplants, and referring to them all as her babies. It’s already happening, to be truthful.

It all started when my friend Denise (HI DENISE) relocated to Houston, and gave me her 17-year-old Christmas cactus. This Christmas cactus is as old as my youngest child, people. I am a Garden Person but I haven’t had indoor plants for years, other than my almost-zero-maintenance jade plant; still, I promised to care for it tenderly. I immediately named it Noelle and started researching How To Care For A Christmas Cactus.

The first order of business was to re-pot it, and for that I needed some more soil. Too long, didn’t read; I should never be left in the garden centre alone. I decided that along with a new pot and some soil, Noelle needed a friend, and this decorative pepper plant was just the ticket. I named her Pippa. If I had more space Noelle would have had a whole clique of friends, alas, I do not have space.

I had this cute little plant vignette for a week or so, but when we found out that Rex was coming to our home I moved them to the top of the hutch. I wasn’t sure if Rex was a plant-eater – he decidedly is NOT – but I thought his gigantic wagging tail might easily knock over The Girls. This turned out to be prescient, as the aforementioned soft gourds are often flying across the kitchen.

Scrub-a-Dub-Dub

I have loved the Rocky Mountain Soap company for years, but I have always ordered their products online. This generally worked great, but sometimes I ended up with a scent that I disliked. A few months ago I was at the mall which is five minutes from my house, and discovered that they had a new, REAL LIFE store! How exciting! I was able to sniff to my heart’s content, and I bought this lovely Blood Orange Body Scrub:

It’s orange, so I feel like it suits a Fall Favourites. It smells like a creamsicle, or The Body Shop Satsuma line. It’s the perfect blend of scrub and oil, so that it really moisturizes while exfoliating. It’s great for those of us who – pardon me for being indelicate – tend to get ingrown hairs in the bikini area.

Hair

I saw this gorgeous photolog of a woman’s journey to grow out her grey hair, and I was kind of inspired, but not inspired enough, if you know what I mean. One day I shall stop dying my hair, but that day is not today. However. My hair seems to grow fairly fast, if my roots are any indication, which means that in the days leading up to Colour Day, they are fairly dramatic. My roots are almost totally white, which means I am always playing the game of is that my roots or is my scalp showing, am I losing my hair or is it just white. It’s not the most fun game.

I wear my hair up in a bun fairly often, particularly on teaching days, or on days that I don’t wash my hair. I found this hair band, which has trailing ends to make it look like a scarf, and I love it. It makes me feel like a fashionable hippie, or a fortune-teller, but in the best possible way.

I love it because it’s quite wide, so it covers up my roots nicely. I have many hair bands, but this is my new favourite because of the long scarf detailing.

Rex, Enthusiastic Subscriber to Friluftsliv

It’s been over two years since I decided to embrace my Norwegian heritage and the concept of friluftsliv; winters in Calgary are long indeed and I was tired of dreading them. I mean, what can you do about weather? There are two options: you can be miserable, or you can adapt. Well, I guess there are three options: you could move, but I didn’t foresee myself packing up and moving to Maui, the only place that I know of that has perfect weather year-round, so really, there are only two feasible options.

So here we are with quite a bit of heavy, wet snow on the ground, and the stunningly beautiful warmth of this fall in the rearview mirror. In years past, I may have felt a bit disheartened at the prospect of cold, cold, and more cold for the next six or seven months, but NOT TODAY, SATAN. I have layers and I shall wear them, I have many pairs of winter boots, I have bum warmers and thick coats, and I have Rex.

It’s impossible not to be moved by his pure joy at the first snowfall. What a dog! In the ayurvedic world, I believe Rex would be pitta. Bernese mountain dogs are built for winter conditions, so I have a lot of vicarious joy coming my way, as we come into the season. And hey, there’s nothing like winter to soothe those hot flashes, am I right?

Hot Stuff; Heart Stuff

Speaking of hot flashes, Kari (HI KARI) had written this post about menopause, from a Gen X woman’s standpoint, and it is tremendous. All 34 menopause symptoms, each with a song from the 80s. This post was from 5 years ago, but I like to reference it from time to time because High and Dry.

Specific to that point, this How To Apply “No-Makeup” Makeup: A Guide For Mature Women is absolutely worth a read.

This month, Suzanne (HI SUZANNE) wrote a post about measuring with your heart, and I felt seen. I never use the amount of vanilla that a recipe calls for; I at least double it or I just glug glug glug it in. Other things I measure with my heart: to-be-read book lists, grated ginger in any stir-fry recipe, chocolate chips in desserts and cookies, and nut butters in my smoothies.

Speaking of nut butters, has anyone else noticed how tiny the Reece peanut butter cup “fun size” treats are? What the what? When did this happen?

Peanut butter chocolate is still one of my favourite things, but as of next week we will be entering my favourite flavour season: MINT CHOCOLATE! But that is a topic for another post. What are your Favourite Things this month? Tell me everything. xo

Baby Got Back

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Hello! I have missed you! I have just returned from a two-week vacation, visiting friends and family in the Okanagan. It has been an entire year since I have seen my mother-and-sister-in-law; partly this was pandemic-related, partly Barkley-related, but mostly it was because we didn’t have a place to stay in. I haven’t said much about this, but for the past year our Vacation Home has been turning into our Future Retirement Home; this has been a big project, including the addition of a second floor, that my husband coordinated from afar, while working full-time at his stressful regular job, and all his hard work really paid off. It’s beautiful.

We have been on many, many family vacations of all different kinds, but our Okanagan vacations are always pretty chill; friends are always surprised to hear that we don’t do any big activities or excursions when we spend time here. You’ve never been to the kangaroo sanctuary? What about the zipline tours? No, never.

Our days are all pretty much the same: we visit with family, I cook simple dinners or we very occasionally go out for dinner, we have friends come by to drink wine on the deck or we meet up with friends, I read a lot, I get my steps in and we all get caught up on sleep, and that is pretty much it. This visit, my husband and boys spent time doing odd jobs around the house – putting up towel rods, setting up weight equipment, cleaning out the old shed, taking things to the dump – and I grocery shopped a ridiculous number of times, which is what happens when I don’t do a full weekly meal plan. In the afternoons we would head over to see my sister-in-law, who has a suite in a house on the lake, and we swam.

This was such a great option to have, since there was an Actual Heat Wave happening, as opposed to a Calgary Heat Wave. It was hot enough that I headed out for my daily run or walk fairly early each day; once at the beginning of the trip I felt lazy, started a little later, and finished my run at 9:15 am. I thought I might die, or at least dehydrate.

I don’t think I have really mentioned this, but I have had a loose goal this year of walking or running at least five kilometres a day, and most days I easily exceed that; there have been a couple of days that hasn’t been physically or emotionally possible, like when Barkley died or when I had Covid, and there have been a handful of days when the weather was so bad it was all I could do to make it to four kilometres, but for every one of those days there are at least ten that I would be quite a bit over that goal, so it all evens out in my favour.

Despite this, I haven’t really been running long distances; I just haven’t felt like it, and I am at the point in my life where I am not going to do things that I don’t feel like doing. At home, I have a Run Day twice a week, and I will take a 20 minute Peloton spin class before running six kilometres, and that’s as much running as I feel like doing. But when I was on vacation, I found I had a different mindset, and also I did not have my Peloton and was getting more sleep, so I seemed to have energy to burn. The first day we were settled in, I started running and I didn’t feel like stopping. For one thing, Calgary is at a much higher elevation, and for another, my home run route is uphill for the first two kilometres; in the Okanagan, our house is on a hill so the first two kilometres are downhill, and then it’s completely flat. I ended up running eight to ten kilometres every other day, although I will say that the last couple of K, going up the hill without any shade, in temperatures 20 degrees warmer than at home, were a bit of a grind. I felt pretty accomplished, though, at the end of it.

One morning I was walking, and lost in the beauty of the walk and in my Jiffy Pop Culture podcast, and when I looked up I saw something coming towards me. It was this young fellow:

I have seen many deer in my life but I have never been that close to one. He kept coming towards me, even though I stopped walking. He stopped maybe twenty-five feet away and we looked at each other; I heard a bike coming up behind me and I waved to get his attention. The cyclist looked exactly like a slim Santa Claus, and we murmured in an awestruck way about the beauty of nature, etc., when he offered to take my photo with the deer.

A couple of bikes were coming from the other direction and at that point I got very nervous; this was a young buck, and we were kind of surrounding him. I stood very close to Slim Santa, and we watched as he meandered to the creek and left us.

Bucky wasn’t the only wildlife I encountered; when we were swimming at my sister-in-law’s, I grabbed my phone to take a few photos, and I saw this GIANT fish swim right up near the dock. It was at least two feet long, and it was in very shallow water. I have never seen anything like it; it looked like a giant version of those sucker fish that you buy for your fish tank to keep it clean.

I was thinking while on vacation just how easy everything is now. When the boys were small and we stayed in the original, unrenovated house, with one bathroom and a toilet that flushed maybe once every four times, at best, and that backed up into the shower while I was showering, everything was hard. A “vacation” simply meant that I was doing all the things I normally did at home, but in much less convenient circumstances; it was exactly like that Onion headline:

But now we have a beautiful house with THREE bathrooms and all the toilets flush, and I make meals we like without feeling sad that no one ever makes meals for me – no one does, but I have moved past the Sad Feeling – and the boys clean up the kitchen and help with the everyday jobs, and put on their own sunscreen, which is, as every parent knows, an amazing gift, and if I forget something at the store I can send my son out to pick it up, and we can entertain friends without worrying about bedtime or crying or anything else. With the kids becoming adults, family vacations will become rare and more complicated, and they are probably numbered, really, so I treasured this time we had together.

These are the good old days.

These little purple flowers serve as a reminder to me: when the boys were small and my husband was golfing on vacation, and I was feeling exhausted and resentful, my late father-in-law would try to help me out a little, by taking me and the boys for rides on his Kubota utility vehicle through the vineyard, which they loved. I mentioned once that I liked these pretty purple flowers – they are chicory, I think – and then he silently drove a long way to a part of the vineyard that was covered, absolutely covered, with these flowers. He stopped the Kubota and told the boys we were going to sit there for a while, so “Mom could look at the flowers.” It’s such a lovely memory and one that reminds me that while some things always stay the same, everything changes, and what is hard right now maybe won’t be, in the future.

A Week of Summer Outfits

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With only a couple of exceptions, we have had the most beautiful summer weather over the past few weeks. In fact, we even had a HEAT WAVE. Now, before my friends in the southern part of the US start to feel sympathy for me in this heat wave, let me show you the warning from Environment Canada to give some context:

For those of you who think in terms of Fahrenheit, let me translate: the daily highs varied between 82.4 and 89.6, with overnight lows in the 50s. That, friends, is what constitutes a heat wave in Calgary. The entire city starts to melt and shrivel in such crazy hot temperatures.

Have you finished wiping away your tears of laughter?

As I’m going through the process of loving and appreciating all the clothes I have, as per The Big Project, I wanted to share with you a typical week’s worth of summer outfits; the week includes our Heat Wave but also a day or two of cooler temperatures, because it’s all about volatility in this city.

As previously discussed in A Week of Spring Outfits, the Curated Closet encourages the idea of a “uniform,” and my Summer Uniform for hot (or, “hot”) days is comprised of a skirt with shorts attached (a “skort”), and a shelf-bra yoga tank. Non-hot days call for a uniform similar to the rest of the year: fitted pants with a yoga tank or a tee, sometimes layered.

One Week Of Summer Outfits

Thursday

The week starts on Thursday, which happened to be the start of what I have been thinking of as Summer Vacation. Because of the Heat Wave, I decided to take the boys up to visit my parents at the lake. My husband was busy with work, so we decided to go up on Thursday after my younger son’s driving lesson and come home on Saturday, and it was the most perfect visit you can imagine.

Behold the Summer Uniform! I have had this skirt since at least 2015, and the tank since probably 2010, but possibly longer. Needless to say, this outfit is a longtime favourite! I don’t wear much colour as a rule, but I do like a little pop in the summer on occasion.

This was a perfect outfit for driving – very comfortable – and great for drinking wine while the boys paddleboarded in the evening, prior to a couple raucous dice games with my parents.

Friday

This day might go down as one of the best days of all time. I will be remembering it forever, I think. It was truly perfect: I went for a sweet run in the morning, and then we spent the day on the boat. The weather was perfect and the water – which only two weeks ago was absolutely frigid – was swimming-pool temperature. The boys and I jumped off the boat and swam a lot, and the boys tried out the Big Mable for the first time in three or four years, and we just had the best time. Many thanks to my dad for being our captain for the afternoon!

I spent most of the day in a bikini and booty shorts, but by late afternoon my look was more Drowned Rat than anything, so I attempted to make myself presentable for Margarita Hour and dinner.

This is an actual tank top – from Jacob, which closed its doors in 2015, so who knows how old it is – and I’m wearing an actual bra, which I feel is notable. The skirt is probably four years old and makes me feel lovely and summery.

Saturday

Sadly, time to go home! I took a solo paddleboard in the morning on the perfectly-quiet lake and then we headed home. I was only away from my garden for a day, but it needed some love, particularly the tomatoes.

Before I get to the outfit, I have to tell you about this watering wand from Lee Valley Tools. It was a birthday gift this year and it’s amazing. You know when you have an old tool that doesn’t work well but it works well enough, and then it’s replaced with a far superior model and you can’t believe how long you put up with the crappy old tool? That was my experience with this watering wand. My old one leaked, so every time I used it my shoes and pants would be wet; this new wand is like entering a whole new world of hand-held garden irrigation.

This tank top, in a subtle camouflage, feels new, but it must be at least four or five years old. Isn’t that funny how that happens? And my black skirt, well, it’s a Summer Staple.

Sunday

It was a lovely surprise that my husband decided to take this week off; something was delayed, work-wise, and believe me, if he has the chance to take time off, he should take it. This is not something that happens with any sort of frequency; more typically he is working on our holidays and weekends, do not get me started on Easter weekend this year. In any case, on Sunday he decided to take the boys out to the mountains to camp for one night. The weather was a bit cooler – no more Heat Wave – and so I wore a tank and these pants, which are the cropped version of the lululemon City Sleek trousers, which you may remember are pants that look like actual pants, with button and zipper, but feel like yoga pants.

They are comfortable for sitting and lounging, which is what I did all evening. When the cat’s away, the mouse will play, and in my case, that means eating Greek salad and hummus while watching an episode each of The Golden Girls and The Muppets. I stayed up late into the night (read: 9:00pm) reading a memoir by Valerie Bertenelli; do not tell me I do not know how to live it up.

Monday

Well, the people complaining about the heat must have been happy, as it was chilly and rainy all day, with a high of only 18 degrees, which is in the low 60s, for you Fahrenheit people. Time for simple jeans and a tee, and an afternoon of reading, laundry, and a viewing of Velocipastor with the boys. Oh, Velocipastor. Not since The Godfather have we seen such cinematic glory. And yet this film about a priest who transforms into a dinosaur was snubbed by the Academy.

Tuesday

I spent a lovely morning with my chosen sister, Janet (HI JANET)

We hadn’t seen each other for a while, so we talked and walked, to the tune of 9.5 km. After that I showered and got a little dressed up for my much-looked-forward-to pedicure. I hurried down the street, which is going through sidewalk refurbishment, so I had to keep zigzagging to avoid the cement trucks and rebar people. I burst into the salon just barely on time, only to find out that my appointment was YESTERDAY and I missed it. I had either miscommunicated or written my appointment down incorrectly. I was so upset with myself; I never make mistakes like that, and it was embarrassing, not to mention inconvenient and a loss of income for a small local business. I was able to rebook myself for today, and I’m hoping a very large tip will make up for my unexplained absence on Monday. The owner looked at me sadly and said “We waited for you, but you didn’t come!” and I felt like a bit of a monster. I wasn’t doing ANYTHING Monday afternoon, I could have been having a pedicure!

Anyway, this is the super-cute outfit I had dressed up for; it dates back to 2016 at the latest, but I think it’s probably earlier. It’s a skort, of course, and an actual bra under my tank top, that’s how dressed up I was.

My older son is my fashion photographer, and he made me retake this photo. “Mom, your face looks really grumpy. Can you smile like you’re not grumpy?”

Wednesday

My older son and I have been talking for years about biking the Banff Legacy Trail, and on Wednesday we did it! We biked from Canmore to Banff and back, and it was really a perfect morning. I knew we would be gaining elevation from on the first half, but it was gradual so I didn’t realize it until we turned around to go back; it felt like we were flying back to Canmore, and in fact we were 15 minutes faster going that direction.

This skirt, which I have had for seven or eight years, has padded shorts underneath, and let me tell you, padded shorts are a must. A MUST. I had a tank top underneath this very lightweight top, which was perfect for the temperature and to keep the sun off my shoulders. There’s very little shade on the path, particularly when we were finishing up near noon. All in all a perfect day.

Lots of summer fun this week and lots to come, I hope. I hope you are having a beautiful summer as well. Tell me: do you have a Summer Uniform? Do you like biking and hiking in the summer, or are you having an Actual Heat Wave, as opposed to a Calgary Heat Wave? Tell me everything. xo

Five For Friday: Nature, New Things, and No Soliciting

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  • New Dishes. I have a very loose, “let’s see how this goes” goal of making one new thing for dinner each week, or, trying one new recipe. These are two different things as I am notoriously poor at following recipes when it comes to dinners. I am essentially one of those people who I loathed when I worked at YMC, a person who changes pretty much every element in a recipe, and then comments on that recipe, but without the commenting part. So, I guess not at all like a person I loathed. In any case, this week’s new recipe was cold quinoa salad with lots of veggies and edamame, a Thai-inspired dressing, and crispy chickpeas and lentils. If you’ve never had crispy lentils, I recommend it: I tossed some drained and rinsed canned lentils in olive oil, salt, and pepper and roasted them at 400 convection for about 20 minutes; they are small little things so I wasn’t sure how long to do it, and I checked on them every five minutes. My whole family loved it, I repeat, my family of meat-lovers LOVED THE LENTILS. I normally dislike leftovers and never eat them, but I put aside a small container for myself, as it was a perfect lunch to take on our hike the next day.
  • The Path Sometimes Taken. I also have a loose goal to go to the mountains More Often, which is about as loose a goal as one can get. Yesterday the boys and I hiked around Stewart Canyon which is about seven kilometres and not as much elevation as I typically like in a hike, but it was a lovely day. Once we reached the end of the trail, there was a small path with a sign that said “Warning: Path Ahead Not Maintained,” so of course, we took it to see what would happen. What happened is that we had to climb over many fallen trees until we got to the point where the path was completely blocked, at which point we turned back and ate the afore-mentioned lunch.
  • There’s A Sign, Read It. Speaking of signs, we have a No Soliciting one on our mailbox. At least ten years ago, but probably more, our doorbell stopped working. I asked my husband, who is very handy and who has repaired many, many things in our house over the past 22 years, to please NOT fix it. At the time, I was home alone most days, and the only people ringing the doorbell were door-to-door solicitors, and I am never going to want to save money on my heating bills or purchase a paper copy of the Calgary Herald. If I was having company, I’d watch for people at the door, and all my friends know to knock, anyway. This was great for a time – it’s pretty easy to not answer the door when there’s no doorbell – but then solicitors started knocking. Can I just say the best thing about 2020 was that door-to-door soliciting stopped? Anyway, sometime in 2021 it restarted, which is when we put the sign on our mailbox, which is directly beside our door. Yesterday I was relaxing after our hike, reading, and I heard a very loud knock at the door. I looked up, thinking it was a delivery and wondering what we had delivered, when I saw a man looking in the window at me reading in my chair. I could see he had a lanyard and a Telus uniform, and I just knew, the way you know about a good melon, that he was here to talk to me about changing internet service providers. I opened the door, and as soon as he greeted me, I said “I have a No Soliciting sign, and I ask that you please respect it.” I said it pleasantly and politely, with my face arranged in a pleasant and polite way, and then I shut the door. I could see him lift up his hands and shake his head in a what’s with this woman kind of way and I will tell you, I was VERY annoyed. This is the second such interaction in as many weeks. The first was a fellow with no lanyard and no uniform who told me he was selling “organic meat and seafood,” which a) ew, b) I eat neither meat nor seafood, not that he would know that, c) who sells MEAT door-to-door, d) we are in land-locked Alberta, SEAFOOD, really, e) this sounds like a scam, and f) I HAVE A NO SOLICITING SIGN ON MY DOOR. I could have pointed out any of those things but I went with f. Anyway, after yesterday’s interaction I found myself unaccountably enraged. I mean, over-the-top, screaming-into-the-void enraged. I immediately texted my very good friend and neighbour Taryn (HI TARYN) and asked her if I was overreacting. She very gently said that I had every right to feel that way but also, perhaps, my emotions were near the surface as I didn’t have a fuzzy companion by my side when I opened the door. She was 100% right, of course. I went into the garden to calm down a little.
  • Bzzz Bzzz Bzzz. I have been spending a lot of time in my garden this week; Tuesday was a particularly low and sad day, but I found it healing to watch the giant fat bumblebees buzzing around. They seem to love the flowers just below the kitchen window, and I could watch them forever, collecting their pollen, as busy and purposeful as can be. The first of my daylilies are blooming, my roses are just about to, and my columbines are putting on a glorious show. This weekend I will have my THIRD cutting of kale, which is the upside to this very cool and rainy start to the summer. It’s maybe not great for the rest of the garden, but I have a tiny little pepper on one of my plants, so there’s hope.

  • Reliable? Or “Reliable?” This sign is on my running route and it cracks me up every time I pass it.

Happy Friday, friends! xo

Summer: It Begins

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Thank you everyone for your kind words and love on Barkley’s passing. I miss him dreadfully and the house feels so strange, like something’s missing. Probably because something is missing. Because I did a lot of the Dog Care and Maintenance, I am finding myself automatically going to do things – check the water dish, mop up around the water dish, let the dog out, take him for a walk – and then stopping, realizing. It’s a very strange and sad feeling.

This past week was the first week of summer, as the boys had finished exams on the 20th and 22nd of June. We had some beautiful warm days interspersed with cold, incredibly wet and rainy days, which isn’t atypical but it does increase appreciation for sunshine. One of the warm days was Monday, and that was a very lucky thing as I had some very special company that day: relatives from California were road-tripping through Calgary and they were stopping by for lunch.

My cousin Nikki (HI NIKKI) and I are the same age, and we were pen pals back in the late 80s and 90s. Did you ever have pen pals? I had a number of them and several years ago I found a box full of correspondence. What a treasure. It seems like such a strange notion now: we would write letters, asking each other questions and telling anecdotes about our lives, and then a month or six weeks later, we would get a response. Now, of course, we can get instantaneous responses and feedback on photos, we can ask a question and feel piqued if someone leaves us on “read.” But there is something so special about written correspondence. I wrote to so many people that I would get stationary every Christmas and birthday, and at one point I even had monogrammed stationary, courtesy of my grandma, who was a recipient of many letters and who had a vested interest in my stationary supplies.

Nikki and I hadn’t seen each other for nearly thirty years, which seems crazy. I was thrilled that the day was warm and beautiful as there were sixteen people, and my house is small but my backyard is big. Two days after this, I was driving to the grocery store and the heavens opened. Just getting from my car to the store, my jeans were soaked and my shoes squelched for the entire trip. I was very thankful, despite my gross discomfort, that the rain didn’t decide to come on Monday.

We went up to the lake for the long weekend to visit my parents, as per our Canada Day tradition. It wasn’t warm, by a long shot, but it was Warm Enough, and it was sunny, so we spent the day on the boat, and the boys went paddleboarding a few times.

I am trying to do more Fun and Interesting Things, YOLO and all that, and so I told the boys that if they jumped into the water – which, I will tell you, is not warm by any stretch of the imagination at any time, but especially this year with the long winter and cold spring – I would too. Here’s my face when they both jumped:

Well, a promise is a promise, Lieutenant Dan.

It was, I will say, refreshing.

We bustled to make hay/ get all our fun outdoor activities done while the sun shone, and then later that night as we played dice, the heavens opened, again, and almost four inches of rain fell throughout the evening and night. A good lesson to seize the moment, I guess, and also a good reason to pour another glass of wine.

Weekly Reading

Girl Gone Viral. This is second in the Modern Love series, and it’s a cute bit of fluff; a romance between a wealthy woman and her bodyguard. I have now read all three – and you do not have to read them in order, I certainly didn’t – and I think the series gets better as it goes on, which is a bit rare, I think. Don’t get me wrong, it’s mind candy, but it’s cute mind candy.

The Maid. I am by no means a book snob – see above! – but it is very rare that I feel that a “buzzy” book lives up to the hype. This one sure did! I loved this story about a non-neurotypical woman working as a maid in a hotel. She finds a dead body, and becomes central to the investigation. Part whodunnit, part treatise on friendship, family, and the differences that make up the world, it’s a really great read. I didn’t want to put it down, and I was incredibly charmed by the smart writing and the complex character development.

Euphoria. This was such a fascinating and complex novel, inspired by real events in the life of Margaret Mead. It follows three anthropologists in New Guinea in the 1930s, and there are so many layers to the plot and characters, but in such subtle ways. I love that, I don’t like being “hit over the head” with details; I love when authors explore plot points in a way that makes you think. In fact, I woke up in the middle of the night last night, and thought “ohhhhh, that’s what happened.” I will be thinking about this for a while.

Our first week of summer was certainly marked with deep sadness, and today is supposed to be another cold and rainy day, but we are grabbing every moment of sunshine we get. I hope you have sunshine, wherever you are. xo

Look At Me, I’m Growing

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All Is Well, I Hope

First of all, thank you so much for all your lovely comments about my mysterious, asymptomatic ailment, but a special thanks to Erin (HI ERIN) for sharing her story and reminding us that yes, we should be vigilant on following doctor’s orders when it comes to infections. I hasten to assure you that I did indeed finish my round of antibiotics and have been instructed to go for follow-up lab work, as apparently “lack of symptoms” is not a reliable indicator for being infection-free in my case.

A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall

We have had a lot of rain, and a few really crazy rainy days in the past few weeks, to the point of the declaration of a State Of Local Emergency, which is fairly alarming. Much less alarming, but still of personal concern, is Salvadore’s cleanliness, or lack thereof.

He became very muddy during the downpours. I brought him inside not once, but twice to give him a bath.

As I toweled him off, my older son looked at me with some concern. “Are you okay, Mom? I think you might be having a midlife crisis.” I am having a midlife crisis! And it is entirely manifesting in gnome-related care. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I am going to go sing a lullaby to my gnome.

Hurry! Or Your Memories Will Be Lost Forever And It Will Be All Your Fault.

Speaking of midlife crises, the ongoing saga between me and the graduation photography company continues. I am still getting emails about my son’s graduation photos, but they have taken on a whole new ominous level: if I don’t order soon, they will be deleted and lost forever. Deleted! Lost forever! Okay, photography company. That’s a bridge too far. I am almost at the point of unsubscribing but I haven’t got the photos from the grad ceremony yet, and by the time that happens my younger son will be posing for grad photos. I’m caught in a trap, I can’t walk out.

Fly High, Free Moth

If you know me at all, you know I have a mild phobia of moths. What you don’t know is that I have been working very hard to overcome this phobia, and I have had ample opportunity to do it because at least once a day I notice a small fluttering somewhere in the house, often first thing in the morning when I’m on my yoga mat. I try to breathe through it, thinking calmly, the moth is just living its life, just like I am, it is not going to bother me, it’s fine, ommmm. Generally this works but the other day there was a tiny moth on the cupboard where the coffee mugs are kept. I calmly took out my mug, poured some coffee, repeating my mantra, when the moth leapt (leapt?) off the cupboard door and fluttered right in my face. Luckily I didn’t scald myself by dropping the coffee. I congratulated myself on not freaking out and just stepped back away from the fluttering, at which point the moth fluttered down and flew INTO THE TOASTER.

What to do, what to do. I waited for a moment, thinking that surely the moth would fly out the way it flew in but no, no, this did not happen. I thought about what would happen if I just left everything as-is. Would the moth get toasted the next time someone wanted a bagel? Would I be the person to inadvertently eat a toasted moth with toasted bread? But how to get a moth out of a toaster? I turned it upside down and shook it. I took out the crumb tray and still, no moth exited that I could see. I tapped the toaster frantically thinking that maybe the moth would fly out. I sat down and drank a cup of coffee and stared off into space for a while. Eventually I used a flashlight to peek into the toaster and I could not see a moth so I figured it either somehow escaped without me noticing or it immediately died and disintegrated. I cleaned out the crumb tray an extra time to be sure.

It’s Lilac Season, Motherfuckers

The lilac bushes are in bloom all over the city, including, of course, my yard, and it’s absolutely glorious. I love lilacs so much; when I was a kid I wished so hard that we had our own lilac bush, because my long-suffering mother would not let me pull blooms off of neighbouring bushes FOR SOME REASON (HI MOM). Instead I would have to be satisfied with just sticking my face into the blooms on my way to and from school, and I still stick my face into blooms on my walks around the neighbourhood. Barkley stops to sniff, I stop to sniff, our walks are even slower than normal. Every day I walk around the yard to check out the gardens and I spend some time smelling the lilacs.

Other exciting garden news: I have rows of tiny lettuce and carrots, and rows of larger peas; one of my zucchinis has blooms already – IT BEGINS – and on Sunday I harvested some kale and Romaine for a salad. My Siberian iris started with one bloom and then exploded, and the columbines are all budding.

The yard is pretty soggy with all the rain which is making weeding difficult, but I’m in that happy place of having Vigorous Perennials in every bed, which cuts down on the weeds significantly. Consider this your helpful gardening tip of the day: plant perennials that want to take over the world, and the weeds will not stand a chance. I feel like there’s a Life Metaphor in there somewhere.

Weekly Reading

No one asked, but I am going to tell you how I decide what book to read next: in addition to a select few books that I own and haven’t read yet, I have a “For Later” list of 233 books on my library app. Every once in a while I will migrate some books from “For Later” onto my “Hold” list, depending on their availability, trying to time things so that I don’t get 12 non-renewable books all at once, which is what happened to me earlier this month. When this happens, I read the ones that are due first, which has meant that, coincidentally, I have read a LOT of memoirs and non-fiction books lately.

Left on Tenth. I wanted to like this. I did not like this. It sounded like something I would like: two widowed people finding love again in their seventies, but there was so much medical detail about a cancer diagnosis and subsequent treatment that I just felt exhausted and sad reading it. Also, the writing style was so choppy and disjointed that I found it difficult to focus. It could be that my reaction was because it was Another Cancer Memoir, in a long line of Memoirs, so perhaps take my review with a grain of salt.

Butter Honey Pig Bread. This was an interesting and beautifully-written novel about a woman who is an Ogbanje – a spirit who dies repeatedly in childhood and is reborn – and her twin daughters, who are somewhat estranged after one experiences a childhood trauma. Thanks to Allison (HI ALLISON) for the recommendation.

They Left Us Everything. OH GREAT, ANOTHER MEMOIR ABOUT DEATH, AND BONUS, THERE IS A WHOLE CHAPTER ON PUTTING DOWN THE DEAD MOTHER’S ELDERLY DOG. So clearly I was not in the greatest headspace to read this memoir of a woman going through her deceased parents’ home and possessions after their passing. To be fair, I did enjoy parts of it; there were some interesting stories and I liked thinking about the things I inherited from my own grandmas that are important to me and would not be at all important to anyone else – one example would be all the old magazines with Princess Diana that my Grandma Fern kept. Grandma and I watched the Royal Wedding live at 2am back in 1981, and it is one of my best memories. But the rest of the book I found to be sad and upsetting, particularly the stories about her childhood memories of her parents and her parents’ marriage. Those were distressing at best. Still, some thought-provoking parts about the nature of stuff and our attachment to things, and the memories they hold. The author believes that you should NOT go through your stuff before you die but leave everything for your kids to deal with, which I do not agree with. The author lived in this house for 16 months, going through what sounds like hoarder-level possessions, and who among us has the time to do that?

On that note, I will leave you with a teaser for my upcoming Nicole’s Favourite Things, coming this week. In the meantime, take care and keep growing and shining, you crazy diamonds. xo

Bits and Bobs, June-Style

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Happy June!

Here Is The Envelope, And I Am Pushing It To The Max

June 1st is typically considered Calgary’s Safe Day To Plant Out Tomatoes And Other Delicate Plants, but Danger Is My Middle Name and so I planted out mine on May 31.

I do like to live on the edge, and so does Salvadore; he has been moved into the garden, specifically, into the zucchini patch. It has been so much fun, the past two months, as he has magically moved every single night after I go to bed. I never know where he will end up; I could open up the cupboard to grab my coffee cup in the morning, and his cute little face is peeking out at me, or he might be behind the television or hiding behind the yoga frogs. Last weekend I noticed the paper towel roll unravelling on the countertop, and I went to fix it, only to find Salvadore ensconced in paper towel.

Zucchinis For Days

I started zucchini plants from seeds this year, and the thing about me is that I have a quirk wherein I get very attached to all of my plants, but particularly the ones I start from seed. I start to refer to them, and I am not joking here, people, as My Babies. “Look at My Babies!” I will say to my actual children, who know I would never refer to them as my babies. What this means is that I have a very hard time thinning plants, which is why I decided to use seed tape for my lettuce and carrots this year. Last year I thinned exactly zero carrots, and the result was a lot of extremely tiny carrots.

Wouldn’t that be nice if that’s what baby carrots actually were, rather than whittled down regular carrots? Just smaller-than-normal carrots that were never thinned in the garden because the gardener was a little bit crazy? Instead, baby carrots are just manufactured out of regular carrots, which begs the question: what happens to the whittled off part of the carrots? Does it go through a grater and end up in bagged salad mixes? Does it just get thrown out? If so, how wasteful. I guess I could look it up but honestly, I feel like I have already given this too much brain space and I should really move on with my life.

Anyway, I ended up with six very healthy looking zucchini plants. If you have ever grown zucchini, then you know how prolific they are, and if you know me, which you really should by now, you will have deduced that I planted every last one of them and I am going to have a lot of zucchinis this year. I mentioned this to my friend Hannah (HI HANNAH), and she suggested I just grow All The Zucchinis and then give away or donate the ones that I cannot use, rather than killing any of My Babies. This is a brilliant idea as there is a Little Free Food Library at the end of my street, which empties out daily.

Flower Power

For the past several years, I have ordered plants from a fundraiser, first for my own kids and then for a friend’s. Don’t get me wrong, I still go to the garden centre, but I love getting big flower planters for my front yard from the fundraiser: they are great quality, well priced, and I can just get them loaded into my car directly rather than awkwardly maneuver through the garden centre balancing six large planters on one cart, which is a recipe for disaster. This year the plants arrived the day after my son’s grad, because why not do everything on one weekend? It was well worth it; the plants are gorgeous and my front yard makes me so happy.

I usually buy one other thing from the fundraiser, just for fun, and this year I bought a ten-pack of assorted vegetables. The pack included four different types of tomatoes, a cucumber, a Romaine lettuce, two peppers, and…a zucchini.

Hurry! Only One Day Until The Next Sale

My son had his grad photos taken back in January, and I was so excited to get the proofs – both emailed and in the actual mail – shortly thereafter. In the envelope there was a coupon code for 30% off photo packages, which was perfect; I wanted a big package for the grandparents, his aunts and uncles, and to have some for our home and for Christmas cards. I immediately ordered, they arrived, I framed most of them, I was happy.

Ever since that day I have been bombarded constantly by Limited Time Offers, both over email and on little postcards that end up in my mailbox every few weeks. Hurry! Order your grad photos now! I am not sure how many photos the company wants me to have, perhaps they think I should wallpaper my house with my son’s smiling face and cap and gown, or maybe send wallet-size photos to everyone I have ever met? In any case, I can’t unsubscribe because this company took photos at the recent grad ceremony, and I have been waiting for those to arrive, and I am way too anxious to take myself off their mailing list because I want the ceremony photos.

I realize that this would never happen, a company that sends out physical mail as well as an email every other day is not going to forget about me when it comes to possibly selling me more photos in a different capacity. But what if they do? I don’t want to miss out! Also, there will almost certainly be another, probably meaningless, coupon code. If everything is always 30% off, doesn’t it indicate a lack of mental capacity on my part if I actually ordered something at full price? The discount is always there, therefore, meaningless.

Step One: Cut A Hole In The Box

The house next door has had a new crew working on the exterior for the past couple weeks; they have been putting up stucco by hand. It is a very arduous process, and very quiet; the only sounds emanating from the house are from the softly-playing radio and from occasional communication between the crew members. They have been working long days; normally they start before six, and they are still at it when I go to bed at night, which, granted, is rarely past 8:45.

The other morning I was opening up the windows to let in the fresh breezes, and I could hear their music playing. I recognized the song. It was Dick in a Box.

I was kind of startled as I don’t think I have ever heard that song unaccompanied by video, but there it was. Hey girl, I got something real important to give you.

When I was in grad school, I was friends with a Norwegian girl who told me that she perfected her English by watching musicals and noting down words she didn’t know, to look up later. She told me she learned the word “devoted,” by watching Grease, from “Hopelessly Devoted To You,” among, obviously, other words. From hearing the crew speak, I know that English is not their first language, and I couldn’t help but wonder if they subscribe to the same methodology, and if so, well. “What does Backstage at the CMAs mean?”

Weekly Reading

Such Big Dreams. This was a very enjoyable debut novel about a Bombay street-kid-turned-office-girl for a human rights law office. The author so skilfully weaves themes of caste, corruption, slum life, paternalism, and the role of NGOs and foreigners in India. It’s a fascinating POV and very unique. 

My Life In Full. I saw this woman speaking on BNN and I immediately went to put her memoir on hold. It’s fascinating! Indra Nooyi was CEO and chairperson of PepsiCo and under her leadership, the company transformed ethically, environmentally, nutritionally, and as a more family friendly workplace. This is an incredibly honest memoir that details her struggles with work-life-family balance, her work ethic that allowed her to rise through the corporate world, and her early life growing up in a multigenerational home in India. She never fails to credit her support system and her luck, but she also worked incredibly hard. It was really interesting to read so soon after Four Thousand Weeks; it was a completely different perspective. It was also really fun to read about PepsiCo’s transition from 1994 to today, all the inner workings of the company. For example, the logistics of shipping chips to different locations is incredibly complex, and if the company wants a sales boost, they introduce a new and For Limited Time Only flavour of chips, which I found fun to think about.

Tired As F*ck. I picked this up solely based on the cover, and so I didn’t realize this was a memoir; it’s really a series of essays that read like blog posts, so very quick and easy to read. This poor woman suffered years and years of physical and mental health issues, including a horrific dental problem and subsequent surgeries that made me shudder. Anyway, it’s about dealing with minor trauma and how stress can give your body a domino effect of problems. I liked it okay; I had her other book on my list but I think I’m going to pass on it for now. Why do I keep reading memoirs by very young women when I cannot relate to them at all? I don’t know.

First Darling of the Morning. This was an interesting collection of stories about Umrigar’s early life in Bombay, from her childhood in the 60s to her adolescence during the Emergency, to her activism in college and departure for America. I enjoyed this very honest and raw account.

This is my last week of classes, my kids’ last week of classes before finals, and it has been raining for the past two days, so everything is lovely and green. I hope you have had a happy start to June! xo