Category Archives: When I said you were average I was being mean

Brain Nourishment

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For as long as I can recall, my grandma worked on a crossword puzzle every single day. It was probably twenty-five years ago when I commented on this to her, while filling in a few of the clues myself (64 across, seven letters, second letter L, one of the Golden Girls). She told me that she needed to keep her brain sharp in her old age, and the way to do that was by a) reading books, and b) doing crossword puzzles. She was not a neurologist, and neither am I, but she was sharp as a tack, as they say, until the day she died.

Now, we’ve all read Still Alice – to this day the most beautifully terrifying book I have ever read – and so we all know that sometimes there is absolutely nothing to be done about a decline in cognitive function. Sometimes, if it’s going to happen, it’s going to happen. But I do think that my grandma was right, and it seems like researchers have confirmed her use-it-or-lose-it belief. Particularly in the case of menopausal cognitive decline, the “brain fog” and forgetfulness that come with loss of estrogen, effects can be combatted with what is called effortful cognitive activity. This is great news for anyone who has stared into space for five minutes trying to think of the word for when you have mixed feelings about something (ambivalence, that’s the word I’m thinking of).

During the pandemic I was introduced to the concept of Struggle Care, by KC Davis, and one thing that she said that has stayed with me lo these last few years is the idea of caring for yourself tenderly. Tenderly! It’s such a beautiful thing to think of and often, if I find myself straying to the self-scolding side of life, I think Nicole, be tender with yourself.

What does it mean to be tender with yourself? I almost started a joke about the definition of tender according to Webster’s Dictionary, but stopped myself just in time, you’re welcome.

Lately I have been thinking that the best way to be tender is to nourish oneself on multiple levels and in multiple ways. I came up with five categories of nourishment, and there are five Mondays in June, so I am making this into a series! A series about nourishment, in the best, most tender way. This week, if you couldn’t already tell, is all about nourishing our minds.

A small note before we begin is that all of the categories overlap, like a gigantic Venn diagram in which our whole self is the centre, affected by mind, body, soul, sleep, and connection. All of those things affect the others, which is what makes this so interesting to me. As an example, we can’t talk about brain health without discussing how sleep affects it, and researchers have also shown that effortful physical activity, social contact, and dietary habits also affect our cognitive abilities. But for now, I want to talk about the aforementioned effortful cognitive activity.

I love crossword puzzles but almost never do one, mostly because I don’t get a daily paper and the thought of doing one online is unappealing to say the least. This is the same reason I don’t do any of the Wordles or Connections or what have you, although I’m sure I would love them. I don’t need any more things that I want to maintain a daily streak.

What I have had a streak of, for 1190 days, is DuoLingo. I think learning anything new is definitely effortful cognitive activity, and I am currently refreshing my high school French along with learning Spanish and Arabic. The latter of which requires extreme effort on my part, believe you me.

Speaking of streaks, I am now on Day 28 of the 100-Day Challenge! Some days I do not have it in me to play anything other than a piece that I know well, that my fingers can find the keys by themselves with very little brain power from me. Sometimes it amazes me that my old exam pieces, which I would have learned circa 1991, are immediately at my disposal, often without the need for sheet music. But in the spirit of brain nourishment, I have been trying new and more complicated pieces as often as I can; my new songbook arrived on Friday and it has been so fun! I’d be surprisingly good for youuuu.

Writing is good for the brain as well, particularly, for me, fiction writing. But even writing this humble blog gives me brain exercise: thinking of topics, writing, editing, etcetera. Of course, reading is great for our brains, and that brings me to…

Weekly Reading

After a few weeks of pretty meh reading, I had a really great week. Readers who know me well might be surprised to see not one but TWO male authors this week. Typically if I’m reading and enjoying a book written by a man, someone in my family will ask is he gay or British? Or gay AND British? and that generally describes Men Whose Books I Enjoy Reading. I will, however, add another category: craft of writing books, as you will see.

My Twenty-Five Years In Provence. I first read A Year in Provence in the late nineties, and immediately fell in love with that wonderful memoir of food, village life, and the beauty of that region in France. I really enjoyed reading this book of essays which touched on the author’s move to Provence, the writing of the memoir that would be an international hit, and the years following that celebrity. I highly recommend it for fans of Mayle – it’s not as good as the original, but it’s pretty lovely all the same.

On Writing and Failure. My friend Gill, who is in my writing support group (HI GILL), recommended this book and wow, was it a hit for me. This book was exactly what I needed at the exact right time. It’s both encouraging and uplifting, which is weird, because it’s a book about writers and their constant rejections and failures. It describes writing as being trapped in a dusty abandoned hotel, slamming your shoulder against closed doors again and again, until one – unrelatedly to the doors you are slamming your shoulder against – opens. The author describes the relentless rejections of all writers, and says if it was that way for Hemingway, why would it be any different for you? He also points out that even if a writer is not rejected or experiencing failure, their work could be forever misunderstood, as in the case of Animal Farm, which was written in 1943 as an anti-Stalinist piece. Since the world was still onside with Uncle Joe at that time, it didn’t get published until AFTER the war, at which time it was touted as anti-Communist literature, to go with the general feeling of Red Panic. Also, Gulliver’s Travels was meant as incisive satire and ended up being a children’s story. Whoops. (or, as Julie would say, whops. HI JULIE). Anyway, this book is incredibly funny and really relatable on a number of levels, and I recommend it for anyone who wants to get published.

What Are You Going Through. The title alone is something we should think about in any interaction with any other person. Everyone is going through something. When Suzanne (HI SUZANNE) mentioned this book, by the author of The Friend, I knew I had to read it. Every single word in this book is so carefully chosen, so artfully woven together. I love her writing style immensely, and I read this slowly, savouring every sentence. This is a beautiful book about humanity, about how we are all going through something, together yet apart. If you are a person who needs a thick plot and a lot of action, this book will not be for you. But if you love deep characterizations and emotionally moving themes, then you will love it. It’s about aging, life, death, and the end of the world as we know it, which sounds dreary but is incredibly hopeful and gorgeous. It is heartbreakingly sad, but beautiful.

Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage. Speaking of heartbreakingly sad, and also of cognitive decline, the final short story in this very excellent collection is about a woman whose husband puts her in a home for people with dementia. What seems straightforward on the outside is revealed to be a karmic revenge on the man for his many indiscretions; this short story was made into a movie called Away From Her, which I have never seen. It wasn’t this story that made me pick up the collection, though, it was because I had a sudden and desperate craving to reread the story Family Furnishings, and of course ended up rereading the entire book. The title story is a really incredible one about a chance encounter leading to a whole new life, and the story What Is Remembered is probably the best short story ever about an extramarital affair. All the stories have to do with choices and how often we can change the entire trajectories of our lives by choosing a particular path. This might be my favourite of Munro’s collections. It’s so moving and intriguing.

Happy June, friends! We had our first strawberries this week, which were a complete delight. The library parking lot is filled with red roses, and it adds a certain magic to just picking up a book. More magic than books normally give, that is! I hope you have lots of lovely magic in your life right now. Keep nourishing those big beautiful brains, my friends. xo

Nature, Nurture, Nerd

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I am very accustomed to drawing a lot of attention on my daily walk, because I am accompanied by a living embodiment of a gigantic cartoon dog whose facial expression is exactly this for the duration:

Every day people pass me and actually laugh at him, in a good-natured, look at that silly dog kind of way. He’s a happy guy is something I hear many times a week. I am constantly being stopped and asked what breed he is, how much he weighs, what is his name, can they pet him.

So I’m used to attention and being stopped and spoken to, and therefore I thought nothing of it as a gentleman jogger approached me and started talking. He wanted to let me know that there was a vole on the path that didn’t seem to be moving. I was happy for this information so that I could be on guard. Last week on a walk Rex pounced into a garden full of daylilies and, startlingly, half-killed a small bird, leaving it flapping and bleeding on the sidewalk. It was, needless to say, very upsetting.

It reminded me of how Barkley, who looked exactly like a Gund stuffed animal, was actually a blood-thirsty killer. He once cornered and caught a squirrel and then tried to break its neck, he mangled a bird in our backyard that I THINK was already knocked out by hitting a window, but who knows, maybe Barkley was faster than I thought, and, unspeakably, ate an entire mouse, which I found out the hard way. Do not ask me what that hard way was, let us never speak of this again.

What I am saying is that I am no stranger to horror masked in furry adorableness.

I appreciated the public service announcement about the vole, not wanting another to deal with another harrowing Rex-versus-small-wildlife incident. Less appreciated was the way the man kept looking at my chest as if I was Marilyn Monroe reincarnated. I thanked him and went on my way.

It was so strange, every man who passed me kept glancing at my chest and then smiling at me. This would have been par for the course back in my youth; in those days, men had no compunction about ogling a young woman’s chest in a not-secret way, and also I was a lot more, shall we say, gifted back then. However, in the year of our lord 2024, I like to think that ogling isn’t the socially-sanctioned pastime it used to be, and also, the girls are not the glorious globes that they once were. Not to be too descriptive, but let’s think of semi-deflated water balloons, and you’ll probably have a good idea why I never go braless. Well, that and I can’t stand the feeling of being free and floppy.

On the way to the family reunion in August, we had stopped at my aunt’s house and I ended up visiting with one of my older cousins who I don’t see often at all. He told me that he had stopped using social media as his wife was worried about internet safety and stalking, to which I replied that I had reached a stage in life where I would be a little flattered to have a stalker. I was, of course, joking – NO ONE STALK ME PLEASE – but I thought of that as I walked with Rex, being the recipient of many chest-glances. I had this strange mix of what is with all these creepy perverts at 7:30 am and still got it, baby. As I have said many times before: life is a tapestry.

It wasn’t until I got back to my car and caught a glimpse at my reflection in the window when I remembered what tee I had pulled on that morning.

Well. That explained that.

It is widely believed that dogs react to the energy of the household and take on personality aspects of the owners, and I think that has been very true in my case with both Rex and Barkley. Those aspects do not, however, overpower their inherent nature, as evidenced by the fact that when opportunity strikes, they become killing machines disguised as fuzzy cutesters.

And for me, there is no overcoming my natural nerdy tendencies, particularly when it comes to announcing such tendencies to the world, and completely forgetting such announcements.

Weekly Reading

Speaking of (book) nerdy tendencies, I had a couple of interesting and thought-provoking reads this week. I have a lot to say, so buckle up!

Splinters: Another Kind of Love Story. About her best friend, the author of this memoir wrote: “It was that she felt, in certain ways, fatigued by our friendship. I was always in the midst of some dramatic transformation…I was always poised at the threshold of some major change, or reeling in its aftermath. She said ‘It gets exhausting.’” I feel like that summarizes my experience reading this book – which, I will hasten to add, is absolutely gorgeously written and completely compelling. But it is kind of exhausting and I feel like if I was this woman’s friend, I would feel similarly fatigued. The author is a sober alcoholic who essentially transfers her neediness and addictive behaviour to the care of her infant daughter. I mean, I feel for this child. I cannot imagine what her life is going to be like in the future. Anyway, the author separates from her husband, who, by the way, is a widower and still grieving his first wife and really, THIS IS A BAD IDEA. They were in couples therapy when they decided I know, let’s have a baby to fix this marriage, which, no no no no no. Surprise surprise, the marriage is in shambles, and the author rails against custody for him, not because he isn’t a caring father – he has a child from his first marriage who is mentioned only as a passing fact once – but because she doesn’t want her baby to be away from her. She doesn’t want her baby to have two homes. The description of her marriage reminds me of my theory that relationships between two creatives are usually doomed. I’m sure the blame goes both ways, there are two sides to every story and her ex does sound like a dreadful, angry man. But also? His first wife just died of cancer and he was writing a book about the experience while he was married to this author. SO MUCH TO UNPACK. Anyway, post-separation she very quickly becomes involved with a man who doesn’t believe in monogamy, but she can CHANGE HIM. Well, until he gives her chlamydia. Here is the PSA I will put into the world: girls, you will never change him. People are who they are, do not go into a relationship thinking well, I can fix that. It’s not fair to either party. This is such a chaotic memoir but who wants to read about a dull life? I couldn’t put this down, honestly, so well done, I guess? I applaud the author for her vulnerability and also her self-awareness. It takes a lot of bravery to paint such an unflattering portrait of oneself.

A History of Burning. CANADIAN AUTHOR ALERT! Wow, this is an absolutely incredible epic story of a family, spanning 1898 in India to 1992 in Canada. The family starts with a teenage boy living in poverty in India; he is promised a job and a better life, and ends up, unknowingly, getting on a rickety boat heading to what is now Kenya to build the railroad. He realizes the terrible things he needs to do just to survive and to find that better life, and he does them. He ends up in Uganda, where his family lives for seven decades before being ousted by Idi Amin’s rule. There they go to Canada, which ends up not to be the promised land for “their kind,” but they work to build that better life and community. It is devastatingly sad, heart-pumpingly terrifying, and incredibly touching story. It is so well done, so thoughtful, so perceptive, so eye-opening. There is a very interesting literary device: each chapter is told from the point of view of a different character, in the third person close, until about 2/3 of the way through the book, in which it switches to first person for one character only. This line near the end summarizes everything: “They left to keep their family whole, something their ancestors had understood. But this time, it was their choice…How sometimes, holding on required letting go.” Chills!

Speaking of letting go and nature versus nurture, this weekend I listened to a podcast about, of all things, Finding Nemo. It has been many, many years since I have seen that movie, but it was interesting to hear the discourse about parenting styles and anxious overparenting. I listened to this podcast just after I had been subjected to a very tiresome conversation about being a parent of adult children, and as I listened I couldn’t stop considering it. I think I have completely morphed, parenting-wise, into Crush the turtle. There was a Dory quote discussed a lot in the podcast: If nothing ever happens to him, then nothing will ever happen to him and here I am, quoting words of wisdom from a cartoon fish.

On that note, I hope you all have a wonderful week in which lovely things happen to all of you. xo

Coming Into The Home Stretch

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With all the myriad changes going on in my life right now, I told a friend that I feel like I am having a Brazilian bikini wax, but the entire procedure is just one giant strip instead of many tiny, gentler strips. With everything happening all at once, I am doing my best to cope and to stay in the moment, while still soothing myself by thinking there will be a time after this.

HELP

My friend Allison (HI ALLISON) used that term many, many years ago to refer to chaperoning a field trip, and I have thought of it hundreds of thousands of times since then. This week was so busy and stressful, but ultimately very productive. The moving company is packing the majority of our house; for the extra amount of money added on to the expense of a long-haul move, it seemed very worth it. However, being in a house for twenty-three years means that we have accumulated things we really do not need or want anymore, and although I have been steadily clearing things out for the last few months, this week I really got into the weeds, so to speak. I tackled the crawl space.

Several years ago I really got into the crawl space and got rid of many things we no longer needed, but there was a stack of boxes in there that had not been touched since we had moved in twenty-three years ago. I refuse to just move boxes to put them in storage, so I ruthlessly went through each one, and although I am not wishing such a task on anyone, it was actually pretty fun. I found so many treasures! I also found a lot of junk and questionable items – did I really need to keep a giant box full of RSVP’s from our wedding? – but I was able to recycle most of it, donate some of it, and the rest was, sadly, relegated to the trash. It made me feel a little sad, especially after reading Unraveling last week, but there wasn’t another option for some of the completely unusable items. I mean, I guess there was the option of putting them back into boxes and then putting them into storage in the new house, since that seems to have been our line of thinking twenty-three years ago, but that felt like a slippery slope that would get me right back where I started from. Also, upon the event of my own demise, may that be many decades in the future, I do not want to leave my children with boxes full of useless junk, any more than I already will be.

The bane of my recent existence has been old text books. Between my husband and I, we have four degrees and probably thousands of dollars’ worth of old, now worthless textbooks. A few months ago I looked with horror at my shelves and shelves of textbooks that were not eligible for donation; no one wants outdated economics, econometrics, or statistics textbooks, despite the fact that not much really changes in those areas from year to year. The only thing to do was to recycle them by ripping out all the pages and throwing the bindings and covers into the trash. It was a big undertaking, so imagine my despair when I discovered in the crawl space an entire box full of my husband’s old textbooks that somehow did not make it onto our bookshelves. I set my younger son on the job of recycling them, along with myriad term papers and, strangely enough, a pile of papers from our wedding that included every single song the DJ had in his possession and every menu item the venue had to offer.

These, along with piles of cassette tapes – including mix tapes! – were a drag to deal with, but then I found some wonderful treasures, some of which I am keeping forever, and some of which just made me laugh. As a small backstory, I was six years old when Diana and Charles got married, and their engagement set off my lifelong obsession with the Queen of Hearts. I was not a child for whom it was difficult for relatives to think of Christmas gifts; anything and everything Princess Di was received with great enthusiasm. Soon my obsession included all women in the British Royal Family, including the Queen, with whom I share a birthday. My grandma had saved a lot of clippings and memorabilia from the Queen’s coronation and passed it along to me.

What fabulous treasures! Also, this candy box!

This is less awesome but it made me laugh and shudder at the same time.

I am keeping this forever:

In addition to “things I will keep forever” I found some postcards from friends circa 1989, including one that said “I hate it here and I hate everyone here and I want to come home” which, if that’s not teen angst I do not know what is. Much less angsty was a postcard from my sweet friend Elise (HI ELISE) from the bustling metropolis of Lethbridge:

I don’t know what is funnier, that I have kept this all these years or that I had it at all.

Should I have kept this? Perhaps to hang over my bed in the new bedroom?

The big day, for me and Rex at least, is one week TOMORROW. I can hardly believe it! I am actually looking forward to the unpacking-and-finding-homes-for-everything part, as opposed to the depressing why do we have so much stuff and are we actually swamp people part that I seem to be going through now. I am, as you all know, a person who thrives on neatness and organization and whoa, does my life feel like the opposite of that right now. Well, again, let’s repeat the mantra: there will be a time after this. And in the meantime, I am going to try to enjoy my last few days in the city that has been my heart and home for so many years.

Weekly Reading

Property. The best thing about this book, which concerns a woman married to an unsuccessful sugar plantation owner in the antebellum south, is that it’s short. The story is dull and every character is unlikeable at best, deplorable at worst.

Swipe Up For More! Oh wow, this book was absolutely fascinating to me! I think the entire influencer industry is so interesting: how it developed, how important it is to brands, and how many women have made so much money in it. This book mainly follows three big influencers, two of whom I have never heard of before: a momfluencer, a fashion influencer, and a unique and important fitfluencer. I’ve been thinking about this subject a lot lately since the Food Heaven women posted their Burnout and Pivot series; being an influencer might just look like taking photos and videos, but it is a lot of work to be successful. Some of these women work upwards of 80 hours a week, and the work is just never done. Their whole life is on display for work, which is a really odd concept. Even odder – and ickier – is the world of the momfluencer, because it is her life as a mom and her own kids who are being used by brands for money. It brings up all sorts of ethical dilemmas: can your children be used in campaigns? What if you put the money away for them for their education, then is it okay? At what point do children have agency over their own lives and decisions? Is a sponsored trip to Disney a vacation or just more grind? The momfluencer in question has since – given that her older children have rebelled against posing for yet another photo or acting in yet another reel – slowed down her own work and campaigns, and wonders if her life as an influencer has deep and negative effects on her children (probably, the answer is yes). It’s an interesting thing to consider. I thought about this a lot when I was writing for YMC: a lot of my colleagues wrote about things like potty training and discipline, complete with photos, and even at the time it felt wrong for me to write about the kids in that way. For me personally, my kids are blog-adjacent but I don’t divulge much of their lives here because it’s their lives. I should note though that my kids actually enjoy when, say, a former yoga student of mine recognizes them “in the wild” from my Facebook posts, but I can imagine if I had a far-reaching platform in which they played a significant role, they might feel a lot different. Anyway, this was such a good read and really thought-provoking.

The Long Goodbye. This was an absolutely gorgeous memoir about a woman losing her mother, and the grieving process that followed. And I will say that I was 100% NOT in the right headspace to read about her mother dying at age 55 of metastatic colorectal cancer, so I cannot say I enjoyed it, but I appreciated the beauty and tenderness of the writing.

All right, friends, I am in the home stretch now. Back in the aforementioned grad school, another woman and I had the Rosie the Riveter poster in our office as a reminder that We Can Do It, and I have that Rosie the Riveter photo in my mind constantly these days. I feel like her, mascara, lipgloss and all. xo

Nicole’s Favourite Things: The Isolation Chamber Edition

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Full disclosure: I had a very different Favourite Things planned for this month, but I decided to write a little about my experience with The Plague instead. You’ll just have to wait for Nicole’s Favourite Things: The Daily Glow-Up Edition! I’m sure you are all dying to know about my new favourite CC Cream; soon, my pretties.

Okay, that’s cruel. It’s by IT Cosmetics and it’s called “Your Skin But Better.”

As I mentioned in my last post, all four of us came down with The Covid, and our experience was that it was very, very mild. I have been pretty sanguine about the whole thing for several months now, but I do not want to tell you how to feel or to negate your experience in any way. I am just sharing my experience.

To be honest, if this was pre-2020, we would have just gone about our normal day-to-day lives with the kind of symptoms we had. Obviously we followed all the protocols as soon as my son tested positive, but remember back in the Before Times, when we would have just Pushed Through? Remember taking Advil Cold and Sinus and just going to work or to school, never thinking of calling in sick unless we had literally one foot in the grave, merrily spreading our germs to all and sundry? Thankfully, those days are gone, and I have to say it was kind of nice to be forced into isolation without being very sick at all. Forced rest is quite lovely, and we were lucky to have such mild cases.

Well, I say “lucky,” but a big part of that was due to the efficacy of vaccines. My husband has a couple of health issues that are largely controlled but that have been linked to severe outcomes, so I credit science and his vaccination status for his bout: he merely had a sore throat for about twelve hours, and an on-again-off-again headache for a couple of days. Had this happened a year or more ago, things could have ended up very differently, and I will always be breathtakingly grateful that this was our experience.

I think it goes without saying that one of my favourite things is VACCINES. I will get boosted for the rest of my life, if needed.

Again, this is my lived experience. Yours might be very different. I have many friends who are very wary and anxious about contracting Covid for a variety of reasons, so I am definitely not minimizing those feelings. I am saying that we all got off very easy – my younger son, for example, NEVER developed any symptoms at all. Many people have reported that they had symptoms like a “mild cold,” but I wouldn’t even say that. The only symptom I had was being tired and low energy for a couple of days. I know many people who got quite sick with fevers and pain, and others who have suffered Long Covid, and I feel very, very fortunate. I am generally a very healthy person, but similarly healthy people have had very bad experiences with Covid, so general health isn’t always an indicator.

This is a very long preamble to say that I wanted to share with you the things that helped me through my bout, and resulting isolation.

Nicole’s Favourite Things: The Isolation Chamber Edition

My Beauty Has Always Been A Curse; Ew, David

My love of the Golden Girls is well known. I have loved that show since the 80s and I was excited to see that it’s on Disney Plus, which is one of the many streaming services we seem to have that I never use. I have been watching one episode week, just like it’s 1985, and at this rate I’ll finish the series in 2029, give or take a few months. My kids like to say I’m binge-watching something if I watch more than three episodes a month, so I guess I’m binging?

The writing is just so good in that show, and I love the costumes and set design. I read that Rue McClanahan had it in her contract that she could keep all of the clothes she wore on the show, so I like to imagine her closet overflowing with super-colourful separates. Also, she was only four years older than I am now, when the show started.

I know I’m about seven years late to the party, but my husband and I have started watching Schitt’s Creek, and WOW, do I love it. So far we’ve finished the first season, and I have heard – from all my friends who have been telling me to watch it all these years – that it only gets better.

She Puzzled Until Her Puzzler Was Sore

I love puzzles, but I never start one unless I know I have time to become obsessed with it and have it completely take over my life. Well, hello there, Covid Isolation!

Isn’t this cute? One of my students gave it to me a few weeks ago, and I felt like this was the absolute perfect time to put it together. It was not a difficult puzzle at all, which was good, as I was kind of fuzzy and exhausted, and it was a really cute and fun one to do. I quibble with the “world’s cutest dog” label though; in my mind, that title belongs to Barkley.

I Heart My Library

I’m always a little surprised when a person tells me that they don’t like to use libraries; when the libraries closed in 2020, I felt like a little part of me died. Don’t get me wrong, I love OWNING books and I HAVE many books:

But I read well over a hundred books a year, and if I were to buy that many books I would be a) broke, and b) drowning in books. I only have so much space, people! I always have a nice big stack of library books on my side table, usually because I put a ton on hold and then they all come in at once, even the ones for which I am way down in the queue. Isn’t that funny when that happens? Luckily I had just picked up several holds before the plague hit us, so I was able to work my way through the stack.

This is my current stack, and oooohhhh you guys, I’m excited about all of these titles. Reviews to come!

Relax and Restore

I love restorative yoga and I do one such practice per week. For those of you not familiar, restorative yoga is made up of very slow-moving, long-held asana, usually with bolsters and blankets. The goal is very gentle opening of the body, while being completely comfortable and supported. To give you an idea, when I used to teach restorative classes, there would be about four or five relaxed, supported asana in a one-hour class. There are a ton of books on the subject, and I’m sure many examples on the internet, but here are two of my favourite postures, that do not require any blankets or bolsters – although you could use them, if you wanted.

Child’s resting pose is so great for the back and shoulders, and if it is painful for the knees to be in this position, you could add a rolled-up blanket between your knees and hamstrings, or support your chest and head with a bolster or pillow.

Viparita Karani, or legs up the wall, is probably my number-one favourite restorative pose. It’s so great for the back and for circulation, as well as allowing a very gentle stretch for hamstrings. If your hamstrings are a bit tight, then simply move your body farther away from the wall to allow for a more gentle experience. I will sometimes lie like this for twenty minutes; if you like guided meditations, this is a good posture in which to listen to one.

I wanted to include these photos to show you that lack of space need not be a deterrent in yoga. You can see how tight we are for space, but it works. Would I rather have a devoted home studio? Obviously yes but I take what I can get, and what I can get is the space between the kitchen and the dining room.

Food, Glorious Food

I couldn’t believe how hungry I was when I had Covid. I certainly did not experience any loss of appetite, taste, or smell. If anything, it was the opposite: even though my activity level was about 1/20 of normal, I was ravenous constantly, and everything tasted great. I am, as you all know, a big proponent of Listening To My Body, and my body was telling me that it Needed Food To Heal. Is this what it feels like to be a teen boy? I was So Hungry, even after a full meal, and so between meals I grazed constantly, for three straight days.

This is a good time to tell you about one of my favourite things: dried fruit. Now hear me out! I am constantly mocked in my family for my love of dried fruit, but if Fruit is Nature’s Candy, then Dried Fruit is Nature’s Gummy Bears: delicious, sweet, and chewy.

These are my favourite dried fruits, which I buy at Costco, but they aren’t always available. Each type is only available a few months out of the year, so I tend to buy a few bags at a time. Am I hoarding? Maybe. I regret nothing!

My sister-in-law (and my brother, too, but let’s be real: it was my sister-in-law who arranged this) sent me this incredible Edible Arrangement and a box of cookies for our anniversary and my son’s birthday – both yesterday! – and I feel that this is the time to mention them because a) Fruit Is Nature’s Candy, b) chocolate-dipped fruit is the greatest thing ever invented, and c) cookies.

Several cookies somehow went missing BEFORE the photo was taken! There are thieves among us.

Those were my Favourite Things this month; this wasn’t what I thought I was going to talk about, but it sure was fun. What were your favourites this month? xo

Science Is Magic; Twenty-Five Weeks In

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I, Too, Get Cold When It Is 72 Degrees Outside

As my husband and I were out for our daily constitutional, an older lady in a fabulously bright pink jacket was walking down the sidewalk towards us. I stepped off the sidewalk to give her a two-metre bubble, and said “Oh! I LOVE your pink jacket!”

My husband said I sounded exactly like Buddy the Elf, which put me in mind of the old Twitter game, back when Twitter was fun and not a toxic cesspool of inhumanity, where you would describe your personality using three characters from popular culture. Mine are, without a doubt, Sally Allbright, Monica Geller, and, obviously, Buddy the Elf.

What Day Is It Even

To familiarize the students with new health and safety protocols, and to ease all the teens back into the classroom after a nearly six-month hiatus, last week the boys went back to school, one morning each. Grade Tens were in on Tuesday, Elevens on Wednesday, and then nothing after that until classes resume tomorrow. Add that to a long weekend in which my husband miraculously did not work and a visit to my parents for an early birthday celebration for my younger son, and I am more confused than ever about the days of the week. I feel really discombobulated, more so than normal. I mean, today is MONDAY. And it’s also a holiday. And it’s also freezing cold, complete with icy rain, in a “hello, it is now fall” kind of way. So far, the snow has held off but it’s COLD. I’m glad I “harvested,” as I am pretty sure my herb garden is not going to survive this.

It’s Sweater and Boot Season

There are a few warm and sunny days in the forecast, but mostly we are transitioning back to socks, boots, and sweaters. Despite my reticence to say goodbye to summer, it’s kind of fun to go through my sweaters again, after a whole two months without them. Shopping my closet, that’s my game.

Also matching my masks to my outfits.

Whoa-oh-oh It’s Magic

I have a beautiful Pandora necklace that is probably ten years old; I haven’t worn it for years as it had completely tarnished and blackened. It hung in my jewelry box, and, frankly, I forgot about it until a couple of weeks ago, when it caught my eye.

I looked up easy ways of cleaning silver and discovered the most amazing, incredibly simple way of doing it. First, line a bowl with aluminum foil and set the piece of silver in it, making sure it’s completely touching the foil. Bring water to a rolling boil on the stove, measure out the boiling water, and add one tablespoon of baking soda for each cup of water. Pour that mixture over the silver and wait for the magic to happen!

You can actually see the chemical reaction take place, you can smell the sulphur. I left it all to sit until the water cooled enough for me to put my hand in to take out the necklace, so probably 25 minutes. Rinse off the silver, and voila.

Magic! Or, more accurately, SCIENCE.

Pandemic Reading

This was incredibly eye-opening, terrifying, sad, and yet very hopeful. I actually didn’t know who Trevor Noah is, as I have never watched The Daily Show, but I’m glad it was recommended to me.

Oh, this was so good. I have always loved “slice of life” books and this one, set in Jerusalem, is an incredible look at female friendship with one of the most complicated political backdrops. Warning: this is not a CHEERFUL story, but it is incredible, so well-written. I resented doing literally anything else but reading this until I finished it. Fun fact: the author used to live in Calgary! Why? Who knows! But she did.

I know so many women who loved this immeasurably. I really loved the messaging, I admire her humanitarian work, and a lot of it resonated deeply with me. However, I did not love the writing style. I wasn’t at all surprised to see that Elizabeth Gilbert is her friend and mentor, as their styles are very similar.

I was one page into this when I realized I had read it before, back in 1998 when I was in grad school and someone lent it to me to take a break from economics texts. It was certainly worth a reread though! It’s good to have 22 years of a different perspective.

Photos taken before the weather change! Hope you have a great week, everyone. Stay safe. xo

“Sports” and Coffee Emergency; Three Weeks In

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My husband really, really enjoys watching sports. He is what I would consider a Huge Fan of the Patriots, but that doesn’t stop him from enjoying many other teams and sports. In fact, I would say that he follows every single sport on the planet. His knowledge of sports is quite uncanny; you would really want him on your team if you were playing Trivial Pursuit, because General Sports Knowledge is his thing. He knows the answer to EVERYTHING in that category, and not just the Superbowls and Stanley Cups and NBA Championships and World Series, no, he knows boxing and horse racing and car racing and tennis, he knows UFC and Olympic outcomes in all categories. It’s impressive, really. Who won the Kentucky Derby in 1982? Who won the Men’s Hockey Gold Medal in 2010? Who defeated Mike Tyson in 1996? The only thing I can compare this knowledge to is mine for calorie counts. Remember in Bridget Jones’ Diary, when asked how many calories in a banana, she responds “Small or medium?” That’s me.

Sports are the only reason we have cable TV, and so this is a sad loss for Mr. Boyhouse. He has been watching some old Patriots “Greatest Games” on the sports channel, but it’s not the same. The other day he turned the sports channel on and there was wrestling and by god, he watched it for a few minutes. WRESTLING. Old school, that-guy’s-name-is-The-Undertaker kind of wrestling. I kid you not, the other evening there was a Tetris tournament on the sports network. End Times Indeed.

With my husband working from home all day long has come the advent of All Day Business News Network. I will tell you my absolutely favourite thing about BNN is that all the experts are – of course – isolating and are filming from home. I am a nosy kind of person and so I find it very interesting what people’s homes look like. I particularly loved this guy:

Either he has a small child or he is really into stuffed elephants. Either way, I approve. Elephants are awesome.

Alarming Issue of the Week

My coffee maker has started leaking. Every afternoon when I start my dinner preparations, I fill it with water and coffee grounds, so that in the morning I can just turn it on. I do not ever – nor will I ever – use the Timer Start function, mostly because I have a fear of fire and so unplug any small appliance that has heat capacity immediately after use. I just want to turn on the coffee pot and have it make coffee. Now, however, after a solid eight years of service, the maker has started to leak so that if I fill the pot, there is approximately one less cup when I brew it.

Slight digression: if my mother-in-law still has a functional chest freezer that she got as a newlywed in 1962, why can’t I have an appliance that will last for even one fifth of that time? Is that too much to ask?

It hasn’t reached True Emergency levels yet; the coffee is still being brewed. No one is getting stabbed. Yet. But I feel that this leak is an important Warning Sign and if ignored – to quote the Phantom of the Opera – a Disaster Beyond Your Imagination Will Occur.

In other words, I am currently researching coffee makers from businesses that will deliver. I briefly looked at Amazon, but a coffee maker is not a prioritized item which, what the hell, Amazon, have you been in my house? and so it would not arrive until the beginning of May, at which point Things Could Reach Grave Levels. The Bay looks like a likely place to order; my husband suggested I could go to Canadian Tire but honestly, is it a Leave The House Emergency? I am guessing NO.

Now, I know some of you will immediately want to recommend fancy things like a French press or some kind of cold brew or espresso maker, and I love you all, but NO. When it comes to coffee, I am strictly a Quantity Over Quality kind of girl. I just want 10-12 cups of not-very-strong drip black coffee made from Kirkland brand grounds, to be consumed between 5:00 and 7:00 in the morning. I don’t want a timer. I don’t want to grind my own beans. I don’t want to savour every sip. I just want a massive amount of coffee to pour down my gullet and then I want to get on with my day.

Anyway, I will keep you posted.

Pandemic Reading This Week

After I finished the Mists of Avalon, I wanted a few quick, light reads. Mission accomplished!

Not only did Nora Ephron write my favourite movie ever made – When Harry Met Sally – but I really love all her essays. This collection, about being a woman of a certain age, is simultaneously life-affirming and hilarious. For the record, I also feel bad about my neck.

Revisiting childhood favourites can be FRAUGHT, let me tell you. I loved this book so much as a child – check out my third-grade signature – and I can see why. The descriptions of the beauty of nature alone are worth the read, and I remember desperately wishing for a hayloft to sleep in. But HOO BOY is this book dark. The backstory of how Heidi goes to live on the mountain with her grandfather is nuts. First, she is orphaned at age one as her father gets crushed to death by a beam as he is helping to build a house, and her mother subsequently dies “of grief.” Her aunt and grandmother care for her until she is five and her grandmother dies. Her aunt has the chance to go into service with a wealthy family – she was a chambermaid at “the baths” – and so takes her to her hermit grandfather who terrifies all around him. She leaves him there with the thought that hey, children’s lives are uncertain, so if something should happen…

THEN the aunt comes to collect her three years later, to take her to Frankfort to be a companion for a wealthy invalid girl. Again, if something should happen to this invalid girl, this could spell Easy Street for Heidi. Heidi is so homesick and sad in the Big Apple of Frankfort that she stops eating and wastes away to nothing. She gets sent back to the mountain. The invalid girl and her grandmother come to visit, Peter the Crazy and A Little Slow Goatherd throws her wheelchair down the mountain in a jealous fit, which turns out to be a Blessing as she re-learns how to walk. But that’s not all! The wealthy doctor from Frankfort comes to visit and is so cured of sadness – his daughter is also dead – that he agrees to make Heidi his heiress/ companion when her own grandfather eventually Meets His Maker and she is left alone. There is a very strong Christian theme throughout, and, as with all children’s books of the time, it has a lot of morals thrown in. INTENSE.

On a much lovelier note, this is a GORGEOUS book about the beauty of mathematics and inter-generational friendship.

Yesterday was a difficult one for me, and this happy, funny book helped me through.

This Week In Gentle Yoga

Speaking of seeing what people’s houses look like, check out my basement!

Pandemic Fitness

My steps and miles were slightly lower this week; yesterday was a sluggish day. But I still got my marathon in, barely!

Stay safe, my friends. xo

Brass Monkey, that funky monkey

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All high schools in the city, it seems, have a reputation or something that they are known for. Some schools are known for their excellence in fine and performing arts, some schools have fabulous vocational programs, some schools excel at sports. The nearby Catholic high school, for example, has won the city championships in football pretty much every year since its inception. Our high school has a reputation for academia, and the demographics in the school reflect that.

So it was with interest that I attended Math 10 Parent Info Night on Tuesday. We are a very mathematically-inclined family, and even though I couldn’t imagine what the info night would cover – I already had the course outline, complete with weighting for each unit, test schedule, and information about notes-for-purchase and the required graphing calculator – I wasn’t going to miss it.

It turns out that, hilariously, in addition to a discussion about different streams of math and the various avenues available for academic assistance, the math department felt the need to give a somewhat prolonged lecture with an underlying message to parents to just calm the fuck down. It was priceless.

I consider myself to be, in many ways, a very strict parent. I have high expectations for my children in terms of academic performance, work ethic, and general behaviour, but in that crowd, I looked like a lax, overly permissive hippie.

My son’s math teacher got up to speak; he is an older, very formal gentleman who is of Ethiopian descent. He began with a very long story about how he is actually a physicist, he loves teaching high school math but his first major was physics. This went on for some time, causing me to tilt my head and think where is he going with this. Eventually he revealed that his daughter, in high school, was struggling in physics. More than struggling, she was suffering. And so, after some discussion with the teacher, he withdrew her from physics. In the car on the way home she sighed with relief and said “I didn’t think you would let me drop physics.”

At this point the teacher appealed to the parents, saying that he did not know WHY she would think that she had to take physics, just because HE was a physicist. That was HIS dream, not hers. I half expected him to start reciting Your children are not your children, but instead he stated that, as parents, we may have dreams of our children being engineers or doctors or what have you, but there are many, many different paths to success in the world.

He concluded by saying, with much pride, that his daughter is now a high school band teacher. I smiled, and looked around at my fellow parents, expecting a certain smiling reaction to a man who has revealed with pride and joy that his daughter chose her own path, one that has led to success.

The room was silent. All the parents were leaning back in their chairs with their arms crossed, and a look of bemusement mixed with horror on their faces.

Well.

After that the presentation opened up to a Q and A session, which was equally ridiculous. One mother kept pressing to see what SPECIFIC grades a university engineering program required for entrance, a question literally impossible to answer. A father asked which math stream was appropriate for a student who has career aspirations of being an astronaut. Sir, if your child is going to obtain a PhD in Astrophysics, probably that child should pursue the more RIGOROUS math stream?

At that point I booted it out of there, and when I got home and relayed the story my son pointed out that I did, indeed, look a little bit like a hippie with my yoga pants and mala, which seemed a bit aggressive on his part. It’s not like I was wearing Birkenstocks or sporting leg and armpit hair.

I do very much value academics, but I am also very happy that my son is taking drama this semester. I played Amanda Wingfield in our high school production of The Glass Menagerie, and I can still do a mean Southern accent. I also played – bizarrely – Shelly in Grade 11 when our school did Buried Child, and if you do not know this play, I suggest you google it and sit in awe that a high school actually put on such a thing.

Anyway, the current unit in my son’s drama class is lip-synching, and he and a friend have chosen Brass Monkey as their assignment.

As a slight aside, during the week the boys work out in the “dungeon” after school; they alternate days and if I didn’t already know their workout schedule I would be able to ascertain it based solely on the playlist blasting from the basement. My younger son’s playlist is almost entirely Guns and Roses, interspersed with some dreadful death metal and – strangely enough – Elton John. There’s something weirdly unsettling about having Tiny Dancer follow Mr. Brownstone. My older son’s playlist is similar, except that it is Van Halen with Led Zeppelin, with the occasional Michael Jackson tune.

I am not judging, here, my own workout playlist is similarly eclectic, with everything from Rob Base and DJ EZ Rock to the Pointer Sisters to Jimi Hendrix to Eminem.

Because of the impending Brass Monkey performance, my son has been working out to the Beastie Boys exclusively this past week, and let me tell you this: if I thought having Honky Cat in my head for six days straight was bad, it was NOTHING compared to Brass Monkey. Honky Cat, at least, has lyrics that I know and are varied. Now I just keep mentally yelling Brass Monkey, that funky monkey, Brass Monkey junkie…over and over in my head.

Yesterday my son was working out and I was inspired. I ran down the stairs and screamed at him “WHAT’S THAT NOISE?”

He stared at me for a moment – I’m not a screamer, especially not for no apparent reason – and then it dawned on him. “Mom, you’re just jealous, IT’S THE BEASTIE BOYS!”

It was as proud a moment as could be. I felt like his math teacher, beaming with pride and joy. I also felt like this:

Well, this Cool Mom is off to do some cardio and maybe I’ll add the Beastie Boys to my playlist today. Happy Valentine’s Day everyone! xo