Category Archives: When I grow up

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

The Years Are Short

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What an incredible week it’s been! Although I don’t believe Mondays to be a portent of the week to come, last Monday night it poured rain, which settled the smoke in the air. We woke up to blue skies and sunshine, and the ability to take a full breath outside without feeling like this might be the first step to lung disease. I thought this was a sign of a great week, and it was.

Blue skies!

I was especially happy – not just because the smoke was giving me aching muscles and general fatigue, which disappeared immediately after the rain – because we had such a busy and exciting week ahead. My younger son had his graduation ceremony, and all the fun hoopla that comes with it. The ceremony was on Friday, but the kids had to return their gowns immediately afterward, so Thursday after school I photographed my son and his group of friends. There is a group of about ten of them that have been really tight for years – some since kindergarten – so to see them all in their caps and gowns was really wonderful.

It was so much fun; they were all such good sports for their photo shoots, humouring me with silly supermodel poses and changing locations around the school, blowing kisses and posing in a conga line on my cue. “Work it, work it!” I’d say, and then “Frolic through the trees!”

I SAID FROLIC!

I had a belated birthday lunch with my dear friend Tara (HI TARA) on Saturday; both our second children graduated this week and we were discussing the ceremonies. Both our ceremonies had a lot of graduates – there were 691 in my son’s class, and a similar number in her daughter’s – and we both had a feeling of deep gratitude that we could be there and experience it. I had the same feeling last year, when my older son had the first grad ceremony held since 2019.

If there is one gift that the Covid pandemic has given me, it’s extreme gratitude for the ability to celebrate occasions. After the ceremony, one of the moms had arranged a luncheon at a golf club for the boys in their group – the Brentwood Boys, as they are known – plus all the family members and grandparents. She had asked us all to send in photos of the boys throughout the years and then created a slideshow, which was really wonderful and special. There were photos from elementary school, sleepovers, Halloweens, and birthday parties, and, of course, there were a lot from the pandemic. They finished junior high in June of 2020, and we had photographed them all outside, all standing six feet apart, and it was a little sad to see those photos, thinking of the fun things they missed that year. There were so many of those pandemic photos: birthday parties where they had masks on, standing outside, bundled up for the elements, a few of them in my own backyard, with chairs six feet apart and a big bottle of hand sanitizer in the foreground, school lunches every day at a friend’s nearby backyard and garage, even when it was well below freezing, because they weren’t allowed to eat inside the school. These kids have been through a lot and all I could feel was happiness that we were all there together, sharing a meal and laughing and hugging. How incredible to have such friendships over the years. How incredible to be a part of this group.

We moved into this neighbourhood twenty-three years ago, and one of the biggest selling points was that there were schools of all levels within walking distance of home. We had the choice to bus the kids to other, specialty schools, but we really wanted the kids to be able to walk to school and make friends in the neighbourhood. I am so glad we made that decision all those years ago.

Back when the boys were very small, I would walk them to the elementary school playground after naptime and before the school let out for the day. It was a good way to kill some time before dinner and allow the kids to have some fresh air. I was so lonely back then. Being home with two very small children can be a very lonely experience; it was always hard to coordinate playdates with other moms of more than one child, playgroups were only once or twice a week, and there are just so many long hours in the day. My husband was gone twelve hours in the day, generally the twelve hours that the boys were awake, so I was just on duty all the time. So I would take the double stroller to the playground, and I would see two moms who were always there with their kindergarten age children, waiting for the older ones to finish for the day. I desperately wanted to be friends with them, and I did try to talk to them, but the chasm between a mom of a one-and-two-year old and a mom of a five-and-seven-year old is vast and wide, and also, if you have ever tried to strike up a conversation while caring for two toddlers, you know of which I speak. Conversational continuity is nearly impossible, and so I continued being lonely, looking at those women longingly.

This week’s graduate, at the playground 16 years ago.

Only a few years later, I did become friends with them when my own children were at that school, and we were all on the same volunteer committees together. I happily was absorbed into their large circle, and we have been friends all these years, the self-named Brentwood Babes. Saturday night, some of the Babes went to dinner theatre, which I had never done before. My son’s best friend – they have been friends since age 3 – works there, and we had a great time watching the rendition of The Wedding Singer, which involved really great music and lots of laughs.

It’s amazing, really. I’m the baby of the group and it’s pretty incredible to have a group of friends who are a few steps ahead in life, who have supported each other through so many life changes and hardships, and who have shared in each other’s joys. This neighbourhood is a bit like a small town, with its shops and parks and kind of knowing each other’s business, with its Food Library and Little Free Libraries and the actual public library, with its schools and playgrounds and grocery stores. For me, this neighbourhood is the best thing about living in Calgary, and I was really feeling it this week.

Thanks to Covid, I will never take for granted these long-standing friendships and the ability to spend time together; I would never say the pandemic is a good thing, because it was terrible, but no mud, no lotus, as they say.

Weekly Reading

Fleishmann Is In Trouble. There are at least two sides to every story, but sometimes, when you are in the thick of a story, it’s hard to see the other side. This book, which on a surface level, deals with a divorce and custody of children, was brilliantly written in three parts. The first part focuses entirely on the husband and all the things that he is going through, and I found myself incredibly sympathetic to his plight. But then, the narrator – who is a third party – starts to show cracks and glimmers of insight into the wife’s life and motivations. It’s complex and very, very gripping. More than just a book about a breakup, it’s a scathing treatise on marriage, divorce, wealth, class, and, most of all, what it means to be a woman moving through this world. Women, as we all know, can never really win or have it all, particularly mothers. There is always something we are giving up or giving in to, there is always some societal pressure on us to act a certain way or be a certain way, and if we give in to that pressure, it’s going to come at us from another angle. This book was brilliant and is definitely one of my favourites so far this year. Someone recommended this to me; my initial thought was Engie (HI ENGIE), but she read it in 2020, and it was recently recommended. Was it Birchy, or maybe Suzanne? (HI BIRCHY HI SUZANNE). If it was you, let me know!

Don’t Call Me Home. There is an Alice Munro story called Jakarta, which features a running joke between two women that starts with “I’m no prude, but…” and I kept thinking of this the whole time I was reading this memoir about the daughter of an Andy Warhol muse and an artist. I’m no prude, but…this book was shocking and kind of horrifying in every sense of the word. I don’t even know where to start but let’s just say the first ten years of this woman’s childhood were spent nomadically, until her mother became pregnant with her sister – actress Gaby Hoffman – at which point they lived at the famed Chelsea Hotel in NYC. Every single detail about this memoir had my eyes opening wide and my eyebrows finding refuge in my hairline. Obviously her mother was mentally ill and it’s pretty sad that Warhol made tons of money without disseminating any to the women who worked for him, but also, my god. This book is bananas. It’s also weirdly written and there are just so many people in it that I found myself thinking “wait, who’s Ron? Who’s Kathy? Is Mike their son or…wait, is that her own COUSIN she’s considering having sex with? It is? Oh my god.” I mean, your mileage may vary but I found this so disturbing and not written well enough to warrant me overlooking the material.

It’s gearing up to be a pretty busy week around here, once again, but not quite as exciting or social as last week. I hope you all have a beautiful week with lots of blue skies and sunshine. xo

Nicole’s Favourite Things: The 48 Feels Great Edition

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I had a moment of birthday-related epiphany this past week. When I was pregnant, way back in the day, every single change in my body was noted and celebrated by me. Every pound of weight gained, every change in my skin and hair, everything made me so happy. I was lucky enough to never have morning sickness or any other nauseous unpleasantness; I did have aches and pains, and I was diagnosed with preeclampsia in my first pregnancy, but in all cases I took it in stride with joy. Oh, so I have to be on bedrest for weeks? Okay! Maybe I’ll watch some movies! These were my actual cheerful thoughts when I had the potentially deadly preeclampsia diagnosis, which just goes to show how thrilled I was to be pregnant.

I was thinking about my happiness with my changing body during that time of my life, and how a changing body doesn’t elicit that same level of happiness during other stages of life. It’s not fair, really. Why should our bodies not be celebrated in the same way, just because the boulder is rapidly rolling down the fecundity hill? Change is part of life, and just because those changes that come with age are not valued in the same way by our youth-obsessed, patriarchal society, it doesn’t mean they are not worthy of celebration. Why is a waistline expansion cheered when one is pregnant, but not when one is in perimenopause? Both are natural occurrences and both involve hormones and shifting times of life. If anything, perimenopause should be cheered even MORE. We’re here! We made it! Not every woman experiences pregnancy, and not every woman experiences perimenopause, but not experiencing the latter most often indicates that the woman did not live long enough to do so.

I turned 48 last week, and although I hope to live to see triple digits, there is a decent chance that the number of years I have ahead of me is fewer than the number of years I have behind me. I don’t want to dwell on the past but good god, I wasted a lot of time in so many ways. So much time worrying about really pointless, stupid things. I mean, life’s a journey, all our experiences shape us into the people we are today, etcetera, etcetera, but still. I can’t get that time back.

I’ve been triangulating toward this for a while, but I feel like I’ve gotten to a point where I wish to fully embrace – or at least, pleasantly accept – my changing body. I refuse to waste any more time thinking about it except to nourish it in every way; joyful movement, joyful food, joyful serums and beauty products. Fashion trends are absolutely not meant for my demographic, and so I will curate my outfits with my own personal style, without thoughts to what’s in style. Joyful Nicole Style! That style will not include wide-leg pants. I have been there, done that, and the young people can laugh at skinny jeans all they want, but they’ll pry them out of my cold, dead hands.

I feel great at 48; I, like Goose, feel like I’m lucky to be here, and I would like to share with you a few things that made my birthday month shine.

Nicole’s Favourite Things: The 48 Feels Great Edition

Spiritual Gangster’s Paradise

There is a little clothing boutique beside the Kihei Caffe (if you know, you know), and while we were standing in line for the best breakfast in Kihei, my husband saw a very cute tank top on display. You need this shirt! he said to me very seriously; one thing led to another, and now I have it in my possession. Did I need another workout shirt in the form of an early birthday gift? Probably not, but the material is so soft, it doesn’t look sweaty when it is sweaty, and it just makes me happy.

Pre-workout.
Post-workout, and boy, is my face red.

Great news, you do not have to travel to Maui to proclaim your spiritual gangsterness, (although, it’s not a bad incentive); you can buy a number of different styles online. They are a bit on the expensive side, but the material is quality and I think it’s going to last a long time.

Sugar, Black Honey Honey

I finally joined the Black Honey party, only a couple of decades late. Black Honey by Clinique is touted as a lip colour that flatters every skin tone, which seems like a tall order to me. It reminds me of the time Victoria’s Secret was giving out thongs as a gift with purchase, and when I told them my size, the woman assured me that she didn’t need to know it. These thongs were “one size fits all.” What. How is that possible?

And you might be thinking the same thing, how can one lipstick flatter ALL skin tones? Well, I don’t know. I cannot speak for every woman; I am no Whitney Houston. What I can say is that, by looking at the actual product, I did not think this would work for me, but it DOES. Does it flatter every skin tone? I don’t know, but it flatters mine. It’s a very natural-looking colour and I love it.

Mentioning the Unmentionable

Speaking of thongs, or panties in general, about once a year or so I go through my underwear drawer and throw out anything that is worn out, ripped, or in a state that is not even fit for “Ladies’ Holidays.” We all know that I like a good outfit, and I think that a good outfit starts with good underwear. This might be an Information Overload situation, but I always match my panties to my bra – which isn’t too hard since they are almost exclusively black, with a couple of so-called “nude” items for light coloured bottoms or dresses – and I like them to be pretty. Yes, they have to be comfortable and functional, but they must be pretty or I won’t wear them, not even to bed, not even to exercise, not even during my period.

I love the products from La Vie En Rose, which frequently have promotions for bulk buying panties. I just took advantage of one of those promotions, happy birthday to me, and I cannot even tell you how happy it makes me to know I have pretty new panties on. Life is too short for ill-fitting, ugly underwear.

Even I shall not show photos of my panties on the internet. Behold, my dresser.

Opening Pandora’s Box

Many years ago, when I got my first Pandora bracelet, a friend of mine excitedly said “This is so great, now your family will always know what to get you for your birthday!” This turned out to be a very prescient comment. I now have four Pandora bracelets, and I have never purchased a charm for myself. For my birthday my parents gave me this gorgeous heart charm, and if you have a magnifying glass you might be able to see the words “Love Forever” etched on the tiny heart in the middle.

Isn’t it lovely? These are my two “everyday” bracelets; every single charm means something special to me.

Nailed It

Before our Maui trip, I wondered what to do about my nails. I didn’t want to waste precious liquid carryon space for nail polish, but the polish I love simply doesn’t last that long. With winter and hand-washing and general dryness, polish tends to chip within a few days for me, at best. I decided to give Sally Hanson Gel a try; it goes on just like regular polish and as a bonus, it dries really quickly. But the biggest benefit is that it LASTS. For me it lasts at least a week, and sometimes up to ten days.

My nails after 8 days of wear.

Outfit of the Month

Since the majority of this month has been spent cleaning and decluttering, my outfits have been pretty plain and simple: tees and sweaters with jeans. And rubber gloves.

However, I wanted to dress up a little on my birthday for my brunch out on the town, and also just because.

I have mentioned these pants many, many times. They are the City Sleek line from lululemon; they have a button and zipper and yet feel like soft pants, which is pretty much the most we can ask for from pants. The boots are Sorels; they are not winter Sorels as they are unlined, but they are waterproof, so perfect for spring. Or, “spring,” as we say in Calgary. The sweater is from lululemon, and I always think of it as new, but as I wore it for our holiday card photo in 2018, it is not. The tank top underneath is a basic Old Navy, and it is at least as old as the sweater. My friend Amy (HI AMY) made that mala years ago, and I love it.

It’s Taurus season, everybody! Thank you all for your very sweet birthday wishes, and if there is something that you loved this month, do let me know! xo

Five For Friday: The Your Questions, Answered Edition

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I love how we all have Very Strong Feelings about desserts, and, to a lesser extent, potato chip flavours. I am here for the debate! Next up we will be discussing the use of top sheets.

Just kidding! We won’t. I am not wading into that discussion! For the record, I am Team Top Sheet, and it was only in the last few years that I realized that this isn’t the case for every other person, so consider me Sheet Sheltered. If you are not of Team Top Sheet: live your life! Do you! Be free! It is very unlikely we will be sharing a bed, so I am one hundred percent supportive of all your linen and bedding decisions.

Well, here we are in March, and I have not answered all the questions from my Ask Me Anything that I posted in December. Let’s remedy that, shall we?

  • Ernie (HI ERNIE) asked: Have you ever been to Chicago? Or what places in the US have you been to, and where in the US would you like to go, or re-visit? I have been to Chicago! It was for a work-related conference back in the fall of 2000, and I did not get to see as much as I would have liked of the city. I did, however, ride the train from the airport to downtown, which was an adventure. I was travelling with two work colleagues from the Houston office, and one of them, Warren, had lived in Chicago for several years. Warren, like me, was a quantitative analyst, and he was perhaps not great at deciphering social cues, but he was very enthusiastic about his time spent in Chicago. Warren gave me a rundown of every Chicago mayor over the past century, talking at length about both Mayor Daleys and all the changes they made to the Windy City. Honestly, I remember none of it, but I did drink a lot of sangrias at the tapas bar at which he regaled me with the stories. I had never been to a tapas bar before, and when he suggested it, I thought he was asking if I wanted to go to a TOPLESS bar, and when my mistake was revealed, hilarity ensued. Ah, I think of that time fondly, if a little fuzzily. I have been to many other places in the US: New York, Florida, Texas, Hawaii, California, Oregon, Washington, North Dakota, Montana, Utah, Nevada, and – for an unexpected eight-hour flight stopover – Minnesota. I’m not sure if I should count that because I did not leave the airport, although I did consider taking a shuttle to go see the Mall of America. I have enjoyed all those places; no one beats the Americans for pure friendliness, in my mind. I would definitely like to explore more of the country.

This is, clearly, not Chicago. But it is Maui, which is in the US!

  • Kyria (HI KYRIA) asked: What was the most interesting thing to happen to you when traveling and why? There are so many incredible places in the world; I want to explore so much of it. I have been very lucky indeed to be able to see many countries and have many adventures, but I think the most interesting place I’ve been to is Egypt. I really loved my time there, back in February 2000, and of all the adventures I had – riding donkeys and camels, being on the overnight train from Luxor to Aswan when so-called undercover police burst in, wearing long white robes and carrying machine guns, and wandering through ancient ruins – I think the most interesting one was climbing Mount Sinai in at 2:30 in the morning, to be at the summit when the sun rose. I was brought up in a very church-going house, and to be at the top of Mount Sinai, looking down at a monastery in Egypt, was a really incredible experience. It was also a very cold experience; it took me three full days to warm up. Now, that is more of an interesting thing I DID, rather than something that happened to me, but I think it counts.
  • San (HI SAN) and Elisabeth (HI ELISABETH) asked: What is one thing you like best about yourself/ which of your personality traits is your favourite? This is such a sweet question! I am at the point in my life where I like most things about myself; the things that I haven’t, I have changed where I could and accepted where I couldn’t. I’m like a living Serenity Prayer. The thing I probably like the best about myself, and I have been this way for as long as I can remember, is my willingness to talk to anyone at any time. I have no compunctions about going to a party alone where I don’t know anyone, I have no problems walking up to a group of people and joining the conversation. I have, unsurprisingly, met a lot of friends that way. It never occurs to me to worry about being rejected; if someone doesn’t like me, no big deal. I mean, I’m not for everyone. But I am endlessly fascinated by other people and their stories; I want to know everything! Like Harry Burns, I want to know the story of your life. Sometimes this backfires and I end up, for example, distracting the Uber driver so that he misses the turnoff, but for the most part, I feel very enriched by the wild tapestry that is the world we live in.

HELLO DO YOU WANT TO BE FRIENDS

  • Suzanne (HI SUZANNE) and Elisabeth (HI ELISABETH) both asked: How did you meet your husband? The short answer is that we met at university; I was a fourth-year honours student, and he was just starting in the master’s program. One fact that you may or may not know about me and my husband is that there is a ten year age gap between us (once, when I was about 25, we were at a party and a woman, upon hearing the age gap mentioned, asked who was older. I have never forgotten that! If we learn nothing else, let’s not ever imply that a 25 year old woman might be 40.). Anyway, I was preparing to go to grad school, and he had spent years already working and travelling, before deciding to go back to university to get his master’s. We were friends for almost two years before we started dating (“dating;” I think you get my meaning). My husband is a pretty young-at-heart guy, and so for the most part the age gap is a non-issue, but not always. Sometimes, I do think about it, particularly as he edges closer to 60. He’s been my Shmoopy for twenty-five years, and I hope that will be the case for at least that much longer.
  • Stephany (HI STEPHANY) asked: If you could relive any year of your life, which year would you choose? The short answer is: none of them. This is not to say I haven’t had a wonderful life, because I have. I have had many fantastic years of my life which I look back on with love and fondness. But I don’t think I would ever relive them even if I could. The closest thing would be our family trip to Disney World and Universal Studios in November 2016. The only thing I think of, when I think of that trip, is happiness. I think of the joy, the sunshine, the fun. We have taken many fabulous trips as a family, but that one stands out in my mind. I would not, however, relive that year. 2016 was a wrenching, exhausting, and exhilarating year. That year my father-in-law died; in fact it was only a few weeks before we left for our trip. Watching his demise was very sad and not something I want to talk about, but it shows that wonderful times can follow wrenching times, and vice versa. It was also, needless to say, a terribly divisive and wretched year politically, but it was also the year I took my yoga teacher training, which was incredible. I would not relive that year, but those five days in Orlando were the healing and happy family time we all needed. The boys were the absolute perfect age for it – eleven and twelve – and we had been to Disney before, so we were prepared for the sensory explosion and crowds and magical feelings that I don’t think is possible to imagine otherwise.

Do you have a question for me? Feel free to post it in my Ask Me Anything! In the meantime, I would love to hear your answers to any and all of these questions. Happy Friday, everyone! I hope it’s lovely. xo

Girls Just Want To Have Fun

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The polar vortex has arrived, and with it, snow. As polar vortexes go, I feel like it is really not that bad, and can’t figure out if I’ve turned into Lieutenant Dan on the shrimping boat in the storm. IS THAT THE BEST YOU CAN DO? I’m not complaining, by any means. I’ll take a mild polar vortex any day. In any case, it’s really pretty right now.

It’s been a bit of a dull week around here; it’s that late-January, not-much-is-going-on feeling. I thought I would take this opportunity to answer some of the very fun and light questions that I received on my Ask Me Anything, which is still open, by the way! I’m happy to answer anything you might want to ask. This week, it’s all about Fun Stuff! Thanks for the very fun questions, friends!

Food, Glorious Food

Elisabeth (HI ELISABETH) asked: If you could eat one meal for a month straight, what would it be? This is a very easy question to answer; I decided to take the soft lob right out of the gates. Greek salad and hummus with pita, that is my answer. I could easily eat that for a month straight; when the guys went to Alaska for ten days, I ate it for six of those days, and the other days, I was visiting my parents. It is my favourite, I never get tired of it, and it’s nutritious and nourishing too. Add in a few glasses of red wine, and you have my perfect Friday night. If we are talking about food that I don’t personally prepare, there is an amazing local place called Aida’s Bistro that has the greatest Lebanese food you could ever hope to eat, this side of Beirut. We don’t order there frequently because a) we don’t often eat out, and b) it is super hard to find parking around there, even just for take-out, but people. PEOPLE. They have a sandwich called The Mouh and if I could eat that, along with their dip sampler, on a weekly basis I would be a Happy Woman. Well, I’m already a Happy Woman, but the eggplant, my god, the eggplant. That is not even a euphemism. Mr. Boyhouse already provides the eggplant aplenty, if you know what I’m saying, but wow, do I love their Mouh and baba ganoush. Suzanne (HI SUZANNE) asked: What are your desert island foods? and I would reference all of the above, but also let’s throw in some salsa and chips, maybe a few Macintosh apples, and definitely a nice Lindor.

All The World’s A Stage

Elisabeth also asked: If you could pick any job and magically have the necessary skills, what would you choose and why? This is also a fairly easy question for me. I would, absolutely, choose to be a theatre actor. And if we are fantasizing here and believing that everything is in place for the magical career, then I’m going to say a Broadway stage actor. Let’s add in the ability to sing and dance, and maybe I’d be a Schuyler sister? When I was young, I was in several plays and I loved everything about them; I loved learning my lines and blocking the scenes and the endless rehearsals and, of course, I loved the performances. I am a performer at heart and even just remembering my stint as Amanda Wingfield, with the lights and the sound and the audience, well. I smile in warm remembrance.

YOU MUST CHOOSE

Suzanne (HI SUZANNE AGAIN) asked: If you were forced to endure eternity without hair removal services for ONE body part (this does not count your head or eyelashes (Nicole note: DAMMIT)) what would you choose to grow to luxuriant lengths? Now, I know that no one is actually going to hold a gun to my head, screaming YOU MUST CHOOSE, but wow, I gave this thought like that was going to happen. I am a near-daily leg-and-underarm shaver, a very frequent client of the lady who does my bikini sugaring (in fact, I see her tomorrow!) (god, remember when I tried to do my own bikini wax? Some things are best left to the professionals), and my eyebrows are a mess that require constant work, so I am going to say MY ARMS. You might think that is a cheat, but you would be wrong. I wax my own arms a few times a year, usually before a vacation. Hey, I’m half-Scottish and my body thinks it is still in the Highlands and must be kept warm via body hair. However, if I’m giving into one fuzzy part, it’s going to be my arms.

You Probably Think This Song Is About You

Suzanne also asked: What is your number one karaoke song? That honour belongs to You’re So Vain, which is my absolute favourite karaoke song, but last summer in Mexico I sang Before He Cheats and honestly, that was a blast too. If my friend Jen (HI JEN) is with me, I coerce her into singing Hold On by Wilson Phillips. One day I am going to serenade my husband with You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling, a la Top Gun. Some of you may remember my fortieth birthday, when one of my husband’s colleagues dressed up in my husband’s Top Gun flight suit (doesn’t everyone have one of those in their front closet?) (see also: eggplant) and started the serenade, becoming one of my favourite people ever and fulfilling the dream I’ve had since seeing the movie in 1986, in the Orpheum Theatre in Estevan with my cousins.

Boogie Shoes

Another fun question from Suzanne: What song would get you on the dance floor every time? There isn’t much that wouldn’t, but for sure anything disco would get my boogie shoes going. If there were girlfriends, or even female acquaintances nearby, I would be grabbing their arms and dragging them to dance if I Will Survive came on. But honestly, it doesn’t take much. I’d do a conga line or the hustle or YMCA or even get low, low, low. I need someone to invite me to an old-school wedding, clearly. I’m always happy to, as the Black Eyed Peas say, get it started.

Weekly Reading

After all those mysteries last week, this week I delved into more usual Nicole reading!

Dear Life. After talking about my favourite authors, I had a strong craving to read Alice Munro, and so I chose this collection because it’s one I have read only a couple of times before; most other collections I have read many, many times. This one is very interesting because Munro notes that the last four stories are not really stories, but more autobiographical reflections. Many of her stories contain elements from her own life, but these ones are specifically autobiographical, which I find fascinating. All of the stories here show the moment that a chance encounter or a choice occurs for the protagonist, and shows how life changes from that moment. This is something that I am genuinely fascinated by in my own, and other’s, lives. We are where we are in life because of choice and encounters, and it’s interesting to think of what could have been.

Home of the Floating Lily. Short stories? Check. Woman author? Check. Introduction to another culture? Check. Theme of ordinary life written in an extraordinary way? Check. This lovely debut collection checked all my boxes of things I look for in a book, and I really enjoyed it. This book deals with Bangladeshi people and their experience living in Canada, as well as their home country, and I am here for it. The title story was the one I liked the least, but I will be thinking about the story entitled All The Adjustments for a long time. It follows a widow who is living with her in-laws in Bangladesh, as is the custom. Her late husband’s brother brings a wife home to live – also the custom – and the new sister-in-law is Canadian born, half-Bangladeshi. The household changes on her account, and it is just such a good story. I am personally fascinated by arranged marriages. I think, like all marriages, that some work and some don’t. There’s no telling that arranged marriages are worse or better than Western “love matches,” I think. But I find it fascinating, the process and the idea behind it, and so I actively seek out books that discuss it.

The Jetsetters. Let me preface this by saying that I love my new Kobo; I love syncing all my library “shelves” and seeing books pop up. However. I guess I now have an algorithm based on the few e-books I have read, and the library suggested this one as I had read The Lifeguards by the same author. Here’s the synopsis: dysfunctional family goes on a Mediterranean cruise, won by their mother, and (spoiler alert!) gains an understanding of each other. It’s like having a sandwich for lunch: quick and easy, somewhat satisfying, will totally forget about it tomorrow.

Love and Saffron. Engie (HI ENGIE) and Lisa (HI LISA) both recommended this book, and it really is a lovely and sweet book made up almost entirely of correspondence between two women in the early Sixties. There is a large age gap, and they live in different places and have different lives, but they become close friends, supporting each other through difficult times. There is an underlying theme of food and the introduction of international cuisine and flavours, which I loved. The author’s note states that she based this on her own friendships, and people that she knew, writing this warm-hearted book during the pandemic. It’s just a light, sweet book that will make you smile.

If you have answers to these very fun questions, please feel free to share! I’d love to know what you’d karaoke or dance to, what food you could eat exclusively, and even what body part you would allow to get as fuzzy as fuzzy could be! Have a wonderful week, friends, and if you are being Polar Vortexed, may it be a mild one. xo

Dreams Can Come True, Look At Me, Babe/ Kalette, I’m With You

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I have been doing a massive house decluttering and purge, using a technique I learned from Apartment Therapy: choosing one small area and setting a timer for 15 minutes. It is extremely effective; I find that the less time I have to wonder do we need this item, the more efficient I am at letting go. Granted, I found three full drawers of user manuals for appliances that we no longer own, so letting go is not really so difficult.

Other than the defunct user manuals, there are many items that I feel could be of some use to someone else, and so I have been sorting things into various donation piles. The Kidney Foundation had, most fortuitously, called to see if I had any donations of clothing or household items, and I accepted their offer with more enthusiasm than I think the telephone caller had anticipated. I do think they are a worthy cause, but I think that the best way to donate items, both from an environmental and a community-minded standpoint, is through our neighbourhood Buy Nothing page. I envisioned giving as much as I could away to the community, and then bagging up the rest for the Kidney Foundation pickup.

At this point, I am ready to just set fire to everything.

Donating things through Buy Nothing, while very worthy, is just so much work. I have noticed that, while there are great people who are excited to take my old books and DVDs, and who schedule a time to pick up and actually pick up at that time, there are also those who make me wonder what I’m doing with my one wild and precious life. Almost always there will be someone who gives an enormous window for pickup – I’ll be there between noon and 9 pm on Wednesday – and then doesn’t pick it up for days, leaving me to wonder if I should ask if someone else wants it, or should I leave it on the step, and is it okay for things to sit out in below-freezing temperatures for days at a time? About a eighteen months ago I had gifted a number of cleaning products to a woman in the group who then didn’t pick them up for two weeks; I had messaged her a number of times, only to get the answer that she’d “be there tomorrow.” At the end of two weeks, my sister-in-law had stopped by to drop off Girl Guide cookies – I have to support my nieces! A case of cookies is not too much! – and I ended up giving her the bag of Lysol wipes and such. Two days after that the original woman messaged me to ask if she could come and get them that evening, and I was so irritated I ghosted her. That was probably rude on my part, but what can I say, it was in the thick of the pandemic, and my patience for such things was wearing thin.

In any case, things are slowly making their way out of my house, with the exception of some of my old textbooks, which according to the city’s website are only fit for the recycle bin. No one wants outdated textbooks for any reason, in any capacity, so there go my myriad economics and finance textbooks from the nineties. But why? Surely someone out there is looking for Varian’s Microeconomic Analysis, Third Edition, 1992. Or a twenty-five-year-old copy of Adjusting To Volatile Energy Prices. I am having a small crisis about the environmental impact of a small amount of broken toys that are heading for the landfill, but let’s move on.

As I clear out old detritus, this week I brought in many new items, in the manner of food. I am constantly amazed at the amount of groceries a mere four people go through in one week. A few weeks ago I was lamenting the apparent end of kalette season, but, thrillingly, it was NOT the end. It was a mere blip. Two girlfriends (HI JANET HI TRACY) had texted me to say that they had seen kalettes in the wild/ Costco’s refrigerated produce section, and so off to Costco I went. Dreams can come true!

When I saw the display I immediately got the song Dreams stuck in my head, and it stayed there for days. The problem with this song is that I really only know the chorus, along with the words I know what I want, and baby, it’s you, and so that was going through my head, over and over, on a loop. On my way home, I heard Anne Murray’s Snowbird on 70s on 7, and it reminded me of the show Sensitive Skin. Did you ever watch it? In the premiere, the husband was writing a piece on the cultural impact of Snowbird and for research purposes, listened to it on repeat for days on end, as he began to lose his mind. I could really see this happening to me, but with Dreams. Not that I’m listening to it on repeat, but my brain thinks I am.

I remember Sensitive Skin as being a really good show, but when I watched it I was 39, and my kids were 9 and 10. I think seeing it now, it would hit very differently: a middle-aged woman, empty nest, moving from her home in the suburbs to a downtown condo, aging mother, midlife crisis. At 39, I probably thought “Interesting!” and then moved on with my life. Or, “I like what she did with her hair.” These days, I would be more likely to dissolve in a puddle of mascara and tears and hot flashes.

Speaking of landsliding, my son finished his last exam on Friday, and so has this entire week off before starting his last semester of high school! In mere months, we will be out of the public school system! Just to add to the wow, time, feeling that I have, my thirty year high school reunion is coming up in June. I mentioned it to my dinner guests last weekend, who then asked if I was going to go it, and it turns out that I am actually kind of organizing it? I am not exactly sure how this happened, and I didn’t really need an extra project, but here we are.

Look at that sweet young thing! She had no idea that thirty years on, she would be wondering about reunion locations.

Weekly Reading

After last week’s fairly heavy and dark reads, this week was Very Mysterious.

The Accomplice. This book was mentioned by three friends – Suzanne, Engie, and Allison (HI SUZANNE HI ENGIE HI ALLISON) – and their synopses made me think it looked interesting. It was very fun to read! I so rarely pick up mysteries, but when I do, I enjoy them. This book had everything: ride-or-die friendship, murder, extramarital affairs, romance, greedy stepfathers, and hilariously nosy neighbours! A fun read that kept me up past my bedtime (by ten minutes but STILL).

Death on the Nile. Would you believe I had never read an Agatha Christie in my life? It’s true! I saw this at the library and thought, maybe I should get on that train. After all, Agatha Christie is kind of a big deal. I have a very soft spot for Egypt, having travelled there twenty-three years ago, AND I cruised down the Nile, albeit in a less-fancy way than the characters in this book.

No one got murdered on that cruise, that I know of.

At some point in my life I realized that I no longer associated myself with the beautiful young protagonist, and instead, found myself in sympathy with the motherly characters. See also: no longer a Handmaid, more like a Wife. Or Martha. Anyway, in this book there is one character who is described as an older, grey-haired woman. She’s 50. I mean, in the absence of hair colour that character is the closest to me, but it cracks me up that what we see as middle-aged was seen as quite advanced, back in the 1930s. Speaking of 1930s, there is some objectional language describing the Egyptian people, which is not unusual for a book from a British author in 1937, but should be noted. All in all, I really enjoyed this book – it was very entertaining.

The Lifeguards. This was a decent thriller/ mystery about three friends that have three sons who are also friends, and who come across a dead body. There are secrets, and a twist I did not at all see coming, but the ending was not very satisfying to me. Questions, I have them! But I did like it – not love it – it was just fine! Three mysteries in one week, who am I?

So it’s been a mystery-filled, decluttering-filled, kalette-filled week in the Boyhouse. What will this week bring? I hope it brings you lots of happiness. xo

Working Girl

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Working as a yoga teacher can be a very gratifying and uplifting job; this past week I started two new sessions and for the first time in a long time, the number of students registered had increased significantly, with many brand-new students alongside my solid group of loyalists who have been with me for years. Without exception, each of the new students told me that this was their first group exercise since before Covid, and that they were both excited and nervous, as the pandemic had really taken a toll on their physical health. This confirms my unscientific belief that there is a bimodal distribution, or perhaps a U-shaped curve, with age on the x-axis, and The Toll The Pandemic Has Taken on the y-axis; it seems to me that isolation, closures, and other mitigation strategies have been the hardest on seniors and the youth, with many of said youth’s development phases being delayed or skipped over entirely.

Speaking of that, my younger son is in Exam Mode right now, and is Very Stressed about it. This is the first time ever – EVER – that he has had to take exams that are meaningful in any way; all throughout the pandemic final exams were “non-jeopardy,” meaning that they could potentially increase one’s grade, but they would simply be excluded if the exam mark was less than the overall class mark. He has never written a high school exam that “counted,” and his first one, last week, was the English Part A Written, which is kind of a bitch at the best of times, let alone for a kid whose strength is not in English, and also who has NEVER WRITTEN A MEANINGFUL EXAM. Baptism by fire, I suppose.

Circling back to my yoga classes, after a month break I was happy to be back. If someone had told me twenty-five years ago that I would not only be a yoga teacher, but one who specializes in yoga for older people, I would have looked like Shrek when he finishes watching Welcome to Duloc. I have enjoyed exercise all my adult life, and I have always connected well with older people, but never really thought I would be here. I have my master’s in economics and back then I briefly considered writing my thesis on how expenditures on movement and exercise could benefit seniors into their golden years, and how such expenditures could increase physical mobility and mental well-being, and thus help prevent premature entry into long-term care facilities. A cost-benefit analysis, if you will. I suppose you could say I’m living that thesis topic. My actual thesis was about alcohol use and its effects on earnings, causation and correlation, and it is also a bimodal distribution, if you’re interested. I will never forget my thesis supervisor and I talking about correlation, causation, and how sometimes statistics move together and thus all such studies are completely meaningless. There’s nothing like grad school to crush one’s spirit and will to live.

I did have a few Ask Me Anything questions about my wayward youth, or, more specifically, my pre-mom career. Sarah (HI SARAH) asked I’m curious about your past career and why you decided to leave. What did you do? Did you become a stay-at-home mom? while Lisa (HI LISA) asked What do you miss most from your previous career and what do you miss the least?

Back in my fiery youth I was fairly intense about my career; after grad school I went to work in natural gas trading, after a brief stint in the crude oil marketing industry. I worked on a trade floor and I loved it; I loved the energy and the work itself, which was being a quantitative analyst for the structured products and options desk. I also cried in the ladies’ room at least once a week. It was extremely stressful and the hours were long; I worked ten to twelve hour days most days, and at the end of each month I would frequently be in the office from 6:30 am to 9:00 pm. In addition to her question, Lisa asked about the trade floor culture, suggesting that Canadian traders were perhaps “nicer” than American ones, and I can tell you, after many visits to our Houston office, that this is not the case. They are the same, in that there was constant swearing and screaming, sometimes directed at me, sometimes not, but distressing all the same. If a pricing model wasn’t working, for whatever reason, I had to fix it immediately while our traders were losing their minds. If natural gas prices settled differently from what they thought they would, there would be much consternation and agitation, often directed at me, although I was not personally responsible for the North American natural gas industry and its pricing procedures.

I believe I have related this story before, but there was a marketer on our floor who, after a phone call that resulted in something he was unhappy with, repeatedly smashed his phone on his desk until it shattered. This was back in the day when receivers were attached via cord to the actual phone on each desk, and forever after when that marketer would walk through the trade floor, every single person would cover their phone protectively with their hands. Don’t touch my phone, man, I need it, someone would say Every Single Day. I think that fellow was required to go to an anger management course, but it generally became the hilarious joke on the floor that never got old. Here comes Tom! Hide your phones! Hilarity ensues.

For some reason – and who can say, really – I developed extremely high blood pressure while pregnant. These days at the doctor’s office, my blood pressure is so low that the nurse always looks at me, alarmed, and asks if I feel faint. But then, I was working a ton and also eating a ton, and so I ended up on bedrest with preeclampsia. Maternity leaves are a year long in Canada, and by the time I was due to go back to work I was already three months pregnant with my second baby, and so back to work I did not go. I could have, and I could have collected another year of benefits from six months of work, but honestly, I did not see how I could possibly swing the hours and the stress with a one-year-old and another pregnancy to boot.

So I don’t miss that part of my previous career, which is pretty much 180 degrees from my current “career,” in which, among other things, I guide people to “let go of their tension.” I will tell you, though, that when I was at home with a one-year-old and a colicky newborn, I thought of my stressful, crying-in-the-bathroom, possibly-going-to-have-a-stroke-while-pregnant job with longing. It seemed like the height of luxury to leave the house, eat lunch on an expense account – albeit at my desk amongst screaming, but it wouldn’t be infant-or-toddler screaming – all while wearing beautiful clothes. Wow, did I long for my clothes while at home in spit-up covered sweaters and jeans. High heels! Pantyhose! Chanel Number 5 perfume! This is one of those Grass Is Always Greener scenarios, and I do not at all miss such things today. I once again wear beautiful – although, not office-appropriate – clothes, and no one spits up on me or screams at me in any capacity. I can leave the house anytime I want; Rex does look at me with reproach when I do, but he is easily appeased with a treat. So even the fun things about the job, I don’t miss anymore, almost nineteen years after leaving. I do, however, miss the paycheque.

Weekly Reading

Happy Go Lucky. We all know how much I love David Sedaris, and I did love this book of essays. However, it has a very different tone than most of his books; there were some parts that I laughed out loud, but for the most part, this is very dark. If you have read anything by him, you could have probably gleaned that he did not have a great relationship with his father, particularly in his childhood and formative years. But this book, which deals primarily with his father’s demise and death at age 98, really delves into that relationship and it is quite shocking. It doesn’t take a clairvoyant to figure out that a man of a certain era might have had a problem with his son being gay, but this is something else again. Again: I really did love this book but it is very, very dark. There are also quite a few essays dealing with the pandemic, and the aftermath of lockdown, which I found interesting to read.

Our Missing Hearts. I love Celeste Ng’s writing and I was so excited that she had a new book, after many years of no new books. Her writing is gorgeous and compelling, as always, but this book is quite different from her others: it is what I would call dystopian-adjacent. I do not, as a rule, enjoy dystopian books BUT this is different; I call it “adjacent” because it kind of felt like the world that she created, one in which children are separated from their parents for the greater good and national security, one in which people look with suspicion at people who don’t look like them, one in which people toe the line and report on their neighbours, well, that world feels like it exists. All we have to do is remember residential schools, children separated at the US border, and the foster care system in general. In this book, in order to get to a place of “peace and stability,” the government created a common enemy, and that enemy is China. Again, this didn’t feel far from the mark; let’s remember Soviet-era fears of communism, the House Un-American Activities, etc., not to mention internment camps for Japanese people. In the author’s note, she mentioned the rise of anti-Asian sentiment at the beginning of the pandemic, and while that is not something I, a privileged suburban white woman, personally experienced, I believe it. After all, I remember very clearly the post-9/11 days and the massive anti-Muslim sentiment. I remember there being a backlash against such things as Afghan dogs or Afghan BLANKETS. I remember the anger at France for not jumping on the bandwagon. Remember “Freedom fries?” So while this world in Our Missing Hearts was a created one, it did not feel all that fictional. It was a great read and very thought-provoking as well.

We have been having the most gorgeous January around here! It looks like it’s shaping up to be another beautiful week. Have a wonderful week, friends! I hope you enjoyed my trip down memory lane to the trade floor! xo