Category Archives: Yoga

Five For Friday: The Ask Me Anything Edition

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Thank you to everyone who submitted questions for my Ask Me Anything! Today I have quite a variety to answer; I love how different these all are.

  • From Bijoux (HI BIJOUX): As I like to travel, what would be your Canadian not-to-be-missed sights? I considered putting off answering this question until May, when I will be back from a trip to Ontario and Quebec; I am sure there will be many not-to-be-missed sights that I will discover. Then I thought that no matter what I see on that trip, my number one answer will not change, and that is the Canadian Rockies in general, and Banff in particular. I think there is no place on earth quite as beautiful and as special. The town of Banff is very expensive and touristy, it’s true, but that is because it is so beautiful and special. The Canadian Rockies are an absolute feast for the eyes in every way; the colours, the mountains, the trees.
Prairie Mountain, Kananaskis
Lake Louise
Lake Agnes
Me and Lake Louise
Hiking in Kananaskis
One foot in Alberta, one foot in BC, which seemed to be the theme of 2023
Simpson Pass
Galatea Lake
The iconic Banff Springs – worth the splurge, I swear
View from the Banff Springs
  • From Kate (HI KATE): Do you plan to teach yoga in your new town? Do you ever go to a studio class, or only practice on your own? I don’t currently have plans to teach; we have a lot of travel planned this year, and so I did not want to commit to any classes, only to have to find substitutes. I would be willing to teach one-off or event-style classes, but I don’t want a firm commitment. I also get extremely attached to my students and I miss my Calgary ones so much; I’m not quite ready for that again. As to the second part of the question, the short answer is no, I don’t go to studio classes. For thirteen years I did practice at a studio; I practiced Mysore-style Ashtanga, which is very individual and student-led; there is a set sequence of postures that each student practices at their own pace, with a teacher available to assist and also to teach the next posture in the series. My friend Lucas (HI LUCAS) made a video of this practice at our studio back in 2012, and if you watch the video, I am in the bright pink pants. At about the 2:20 mark, you can see the wild backbends I used to be able to do. Anyway, I was so grateful to have this kind of daily practice established because when the pandemic hit, I continued with it, just at home, and without a teacher. One or two days a week I take a restorative or yin practice, again, at home. I did take one led class last year, as my friend Sara (HI SARA) was giving a special class at an art studio; I enjoy this kind of thing once in a while, but generally I prefer a practice which is more of a moving meditation than a led class.
From 2015
Practicing in what is now my kitchen, before it was my kitchen
A fancy studio shot, 2019
Another studio shot, 2019
Current yoga setup
  • From Steph (HI STEPH): Do you think you will eventually work again or are you and and your husband both retired for good? This question also answers Coco‘s question (HI COCO) who asked what does your husband do? Steph’s is a very interesting question, because I always think of “work” as the days when I worked in an office, on a trade floor, which I quit in 2004 after having my first baby. Of course, I have had various little jobs, including teaching yoga, since then, but I guess I don’t think of them as work that one retires from, exactly. So the answer to that question is never say never! I have a few ideas and projects, but whether or not they will result in any monetary compensation remains to be seen. I can confidently say my husband is definitely retired; he is enjoying the retirement life immensely. Currently, he is in his workshop building me cedar garden beds, so I can also say we are both benefitting from his retirement.
Work in progress
  • From Elisabeth (HI ELISABETH): What is your least favourite food item in the world? No contest: celery. I loathe celery. Everything about it is disgusting to me: the smell, the taste, the weird stringy texture. I clearly remember a kid bringing ants on a log for shared preschool snack, and the absolute horror it inspired in me. I love peanut butter. I love raisins. WHY MUST WE PUT THOSE DELICIOUS THINGS ON A PIECE OF THE DEVIL’S GREENERY? Close second to least favourite food: onions. I don’t mind onion flavour, so a dehydrated onion flake or onion powder is fine. But the texture of onions, particularly raw onions, gives me a full-body shudder. Not as bad as celery, and if there was a gun to my head I’d probably eat one, but that gun would have to be loaded. Obviously I don’t eat meat or seafood ever, and I don’t like to eat eggs either, although if an egg is in a baked good that you presented to me – especially if that baked good was a cake – I would eat it.
My husband made me this for Christmas!
  • From Engie (HI ENGIE): Do you think aliens exist? I am an Alien Agnostic: I just don’t know. I don’t see any reason why they couldn’t exist. The universe is big, and no one has the answers, so why not? As an alien aside, I have always had a terrible fear of E.T. I was seven when E.T. came out, and all of my little gal pals both loved the movie and loved E.T. as a concept; they were all getting E.T. stuffies and shirts and backpacks, and the horror, the horror. He’s so cute they’d say, while I would try not to cry. Look at him hiding in the stuffed animals, they would say, while I would panic, thinking about my own stuffed animals and what I would do if there was an alien among them. I have never once seen the movie the whole way through; I always have to stop it before curling up in the fetal position in a corner. I have a real visceral reaction to the whole thing. Many years ago my husband gently tried to get me to face my fears, saying in a calming voice “It’s really a nice movie, E.T. just wants to go home to his family!” and at that I started crying uncontrollably, and he probably wondered if he should return the ring, or just go ahead and face life together with a grown woman with E.T. trauma.
My Cheer Bear, without an E.T. I believe in the power of the Care Bear stare!

More Screaming Into The Void

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Weekly Reading

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

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

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

Yoga Talk

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After years of dedicated practice, in 2016 I took yoga teacher training, and I have been lucky enough to be teaching consistently ever since. I have taught everything from vigorous, athletic Ashtanga to slow-moving restorative yoga; senior’s yoga and yoga for stroke survivors, Hatha yoga and chair yoga, and even one outdoor children’s yoga class, for my niece’s Sparks unit. Teaching this wide variety of classes has given me a very good understanding of different bodies, abilities, and needs, and I think it has made me a better teacher.

Recently Suzanne (HI SUZANNE) asked her readers to discuss things that they excel at, that make them feel in their element, and for me, I think it’s teaching yoga. More specifically, I think my strength is making students feel comfortable and welcome in my yoga classes, and encouraging them to just be there and be part of the group. I really try to make new students feel like they are immediately part of the community; I work hard to make a warm and welcoming space for everyone to explore yoga postures as they need to.

I trained to be a yoga teacher under a man who was himself Iyengar trained, and if you know anything about yoga, you will know that Iyengar-style is very focused on alignment; in other words, to be very exact in how the posture is taken. It is ironic, then, that my particular teaching style has nothing to do with this. I believe very strongly that we all have different bodies, and so every asana is going to look different for every person. I spend a lot of time thinking of different variations so that any given posture can be accessible to every person in every class, regardless of any bodily limitations.

I became very good at this when I was teaching yoga for stroke survivors; some of my students were seated on mats, some on chairs, the occasional student in a wheelchair or scooter. I would read the room and then figure out how we could all do, for example, baddha konasana or butterfly pose. On a chair, it looks like putting the soles of the feet close together while allowing the knees to go apart, on the mat it looks different, but it is having the same benefit. One is not better than the other, but one may be more appropriate or accessible, depending on the person.

In 2017 I started subbing every so often at a community centre, and I ended up taking over these classes entirely a little while later. These are registered classes, which are an absolute joy. Students have come and gone – and this week I had two new students, one lady who had never done any yoga before in her life – but I have been teaching a core group of ladies, and the occasional gentleman, for years now, and I know all about their lives, their spouses, their children and grandchildren, their surgeries, their blood pressure and cataracts, just everything about their lives. I am a people person and for all the classes I have taught, I have always tried to find out at least a little bit about every single person. I have taught a lot of people over the years, and so I occasionally forget a name or detail, but not with my registered classes. Seeing people regularly for years really builds up a great sense of community.

There is one small thing about these wonderful classes, and I can’t decide if it’s ultimately a “we’re all in this together,” character-building, This Is Real Yoga thing, or if it’s what it feels like, which is kind of a negative: the actual physical space. It’s different from the cushy studios I have taught at over the years that feature art and candles, props and blankets, soft lighting and tea after class. This is an old-school community centre hall: a big spacious, drafty room with fluorescent lighting and linoleum over concrete floors. It’s chilly at the best of times, and this past six weeks, all classes have been cancelled as they have been replacing the HVAC system. Last Monday was my first class since mid-March, and I was excited to see all my students again.

I received an email the week before classes restarted, which said that classes were still starting as scheduled but there was still no heat in the building. This is a room that is chilly at the best of times, but with no heat? People, it was brutal. There were space heaters, but they did not seem to improve the situation at all. The room was 16 degrees in my Monday afternoon class but 13 degrees for my Thursday morning class; I wore a jacket with thumbholes and thick legwarmers with wide stirrups, I tried to incorporate as much movement as I could to keep warm, but it’s a ninety-minute class, and ninety minutes in a cold room is a long time. And the heat won’t be fixed until Friday, so I have two more classes like this.

It reminded me of when I used to teach Yoga for Seniors at a beautiful studio, pre-pandemic. The room at the studio was kept quite warm – between 24 and 26 degrees – and I usually tried to cool it down a bit before class, as the warmth was not popular with my senior students. One gentleman in particular HATED it. He used to ask if he could open the windows in the dead of winter, and once plaintively asked me if there was any such thing as “cold yoga,” and if so, where could he sign up. I’ve thought of him many times through the pandemic: he would have loved chilly outdoor yoga classes, and he would have absolutely been all over the classes this week. I guess it shows that there is truly a yoga for everyone.

Weekly Reading

Bear. Have you ever looked at a wild animal and thought “I wonder what it would be like to fuck that?” Well, wonder no more! This book, about a lonely woman spending a summer on an isolated island in northern Canada, won the Governor General award in 1976, which really makes you wonder what was happening in Canadian literature at the time. It is literally a woman having a sexual relationship with a bear and not, as my son asked, a big furry gay guy. An actual bear. I don’t want to kink shame anyone but I think we can all agree not to embark on inter species sexual relations. This book is just as strange as you might think. Yes, if we were in a literature class we could talk about the symbolism of a woman going from a colourless, meaningless life in the polluted Big Smoke, and then becoming one with the glory that is Canadian nature, but also? The image of the bear giving oral along with its erection is incredibly disturbing. Did you know bear penises have bones in them? Well, now you do. This book gives a whole new meaning to animal lust, and also “boning.”

More Than You’ll Ever Know. This story revolves around a woman who was leading a double life – two families, two countries. She was married to two men, one of whom was murdered when this double life is discovered. Decades later, a writer tries to uncover the truth by telling her story. There are some very unexpected twists and a side story about the writer that I didn’t care for, but all in all a diverting read.

All Along You Were Blooming. This is such a wonderful little book of uplifting poems and readings. I have been reading this before my yoga practice for the past several months and it never fails to warm my heart. It’s really beautiful.

It is forecasted to be warm and sunny all this week, which I’m hoping will help with the warmth in the community centre. I have had a pretty wild, rollercoaster week, but everything has ended on a very high note. I spent the weekend at my parents’, which was lovely, and included a second birthday cake! Happy May, friends! May day, m’aidez! xo

Happy Galentine’s Day!

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It’s February 13, and you know what that means!

Happy Galentine’s Day!

I don’t know what it’s like in your house, but in mine, Valentine’s Day is kind of a non-event. Not a total non-event; we do celebrate with cookies:

And cake:

But other than baked goods and the tank top decorated with a bee and the words Bee Mine that my husband gave me one year, we really don’t celebrate it around here. If you know me at all, you would know that the bee top won me over for years to come, although I am still waiting on the I Choo-Choo-Choose you card.

So there’s no big romantic dinner (on a Tuesday, are you crazy?), and wine mid-week disrupts my sleep; my husband and son have pollen allergies so floral bouquets are a no-go as well. I could really get down with heart-shaped chocolates, although I usually like to buy them discounted on February 15. What can I say, I’m half-Scottish. We spent Friday night watching a special on Super Bowl commercials, and Saturday watching only the funny parts and fast-forwarding the rest of Old School, so who’s winning at romance now?

I do like to lean into the idea of GALENTINE’S Day, though. Last year at this time I vowed I would host a Swistle-style Galentine’s party (HI SWISTLE), but I remembered that vow only a few days ago, so that was a no-go. Next year, maybe. Instead, I put together a bunch of silly classroom cards for my Monday afternoon ladies, and taped a strawberry Lindor to each one. If you have never tried a strawberry Lindor, my goodness, you are in for a big treat. If you like fruity chocolate, that is, which I do.

For Christmas I received a new Garmin watch, and one of the new features on it is a “Body Battery,” which uses metrics like heart rate, stress levels, and sleep quality to measure the body’s energy reserves throughout the day. I am OBSESSED. I used to focus on Steps and Intensity Minutes, but now it’s all about the Body Battery, baby. Well, I still look at Steps and Intensity Minutes, but other than hitting my daily goals, I don’t really care much. With the Body Battery measurement, it’s fascinating to me to see my energy levels go up and down, and what affects them. If I read for an hour, what happens? If I walk for an hour, what happens? It’s not like I need data from a watch to tell me that I’m tired or refreshed, but it’s nice to have that confirmation, if you know what I mean.

Here’s the reading after a decent sleep:

And a not-great-but-not-terrible sleep:

And here’s a Friday night sleep, after I’ve had a couple of glasses of wine:

Oops! Well, the cost/ benefit analysis still comes up in favour of Friday night wine, as it is a treat I look forward to, but everything has its price, I guess.

In terms of batteries, and recharging them, I sometimes think of people in this way. There are people who I feel literally energized after talking to or visiting with, and there are those who I can feel my battery draining away in their presence. It’s not that I dislike those people, or never want to see them, but I do limit my time around them, and bring awareness to myself and how I’m feeling when I am around them.

In a Charge My Battery move, I signed up for my friend Sara’s (HI SARA) yoga event at a local art gallery. This is the first led yoga class, not taught by me, that I have attended since 2018. Sara has a thriving online teaching presence, but every few months she has an in-person event and the stars lined up for me this weekend, and I was able to attend.

Let me tell you, what a treat it was. My daily practice and, obviously, the classes I teach are all set by me; I flow through my own cadence and breathwork and asana. What a treat it was to follow along with the nourishing, delicious class of asana Sara put together! If you’re local – or even if you’re not, because she’s online! – you should really check out her classes. Rumour has it that her sweet dog Alton is always on or near the mat during her online classes.

I’m sure this guy would love to be on my mat too! But he’s still sleeping when I’m practicing.

Weekly Reading

I didn’t really make any New Year’s Resolutions, or choose a word of the year, or what have you, but after reading that nightmare of a book back in late December and regretting the time wasted in reading it, I have decided to just…not finish books if I don’t want to. Generally I push through, thinking maybe it will get better, and you know what, it rarely does. Why am I wasting my time? NO MORE. So far this year I have picked up and then immediately taken back to the library four books. The first was Something Wilder, by Christina Lauren. I have liked and not liked their books in the past, and I read the prologue and the book jacket before deciding that this one was not for me. The second was The Opportunist, which I had picked up on a whim at the library, and by the first chapter I was completely irritated by the characters. The third was a book that is actually quite good, but that I realized I had read before, in August 2020, which is When You Read This. Does that happen to you? I will start a book and by the first or second chapter I will think wait a minute…and then I’ll check my spreadsheet and see that yes, I’ve been there and done that. So, there was nothing wrong with When You Read This, but if I’m going to reread something, I want it to be on purpose. The final Did Not Finish Or Even Start was Matthew Perry’s memoir. I do not, as a rule, enjoy addiction memoirs, and by flipping through it casually I could see that it was ENTIRELY about his addictions. Also, after reading a paragraph here and there I saw that it was trying really hard to be funny, and I decided not to waste my time.

Anyway, I had some real winners this week in the reading department. In what can only be described as Library Kismet, all the books that came in on my hold list this week were romances. Does the library know it’s Valentine’s Day? Maybe!

The Bodyguard. Well! This was just the most delightful read! It was exactly what I needed this week. The plot, while a little silly, is just so much fun and I am 100% here for it. It follows a woman who works as a specialized bodyguard, and she is put on duty to guard a Chris Hemsworth-like movie star from a stalker, as he has moved to Texas to be near his ill mother. He doesn’t want knowledge about the stalker to add stress to his family, so the bodyguard needs to be undercover; she has to pretend to be his new girlfriend. PEOPLE. I AM HERE FOR THIS. I think we all know what happens in romance books when there is a pretend relationship – SHIT GETS REAL, Y’ALL. I can’t say enough about this cute book, because although, like I said, the plot is a little silly, the theme is REALLY good and heartwarming, and the epilogue, my goodness, the epilogue. A delight. The narration and dialogue are really funny, too. If you need a pick-me-up, go get yourself this book, stat.

In A New York Minute. Oh my gerrrrrrd this was SO MUCH FUN TO READ! I am dying! It’s such a good romance – it starts with the worst day ever: a layoff, a sweaty subway ride, a wardrobe malfunction to end all wardrobe malfunctions. Listen, while carrying the box from her desk after being laid off, her dress catches in the subway and completely rips down the back, leaving her as exposed to the New York commute rush as wearing a hospital gown. And someone is live-streaming it onto Instagram stories. A stranger comes to her sartorial rescue – but the two are opposites. OPPOSITES YOU GUYS, I THINK YOU KNOW WHAT’S GOING TO HAPPEN. It’s such a romp and I never say this, because I generally deeply dislike when books are adapted for the screen, but if this was made into a movie, I’d watch it. The happens to be cohost of one of my fave podcasts, Forever 35. If you love joy and happiness and warm fuzzy feelings, I recommend both book and podcast! 

Nora Goes Off Script. Well, with this, I am 3/3 for incredible romance novels this week! This was so good; a screenwriter’s home is the set for her movie, and the leading man stays on for a while after to rest and recharge. He settles into her routine as a single mom, and they end up having an affair. This takes twists that I did not see coming, and was a delightful mix of “I am woman hear me roar” and heart warming romance. Oh, and by the way, the screenwriter is a Hallmark-movie style screenwriter who makes it big with a different style of script, and I was here for it. A Hallmark-type-book with a twist, about a Hallmark-movie-writer with a twist! I loved it. 

Happy Galentine’s Day, my friends, and may your Valentine’s Day be filled with self-love and battery recharging. May your February 15 be filled with half-price chocolates. 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

Someone Is Staring At You In “Personal Growth”

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Happy New Year! I hope you all had a wonderful holiday season. Mine was very restful and restorative, which was apparently just what I needed. I like to think of my life as a series of seasons, both Life Seasons – can I sail through the changing ocean tides, can I handle the seasons of my life –and Actual Calendar Seasons. For me, December is the Season of Indulgence and Light, and I enjoy it very much as such. I don’t think twice about the third glass of wine or the lovely dessert or the eight thousand cups of my mom’s delicious snack mix. It is, as Clark says when Audrey is frozen from the waist down, all part of the experience.

I also strongly believe in the concept of Balancing Yin and Yang, specifically that if one does not get enough Yin, or rest, Yin will be forced upon one, usually in the form of illness or injury. To that end, I noticed around December 22 of this year that my body and mind just felt tired. I do not think I have a particularly stressful or busy life, but I believe very strongly in listening to myself, and what I was trying to tell me was that I needed rest. I scaled way back on exercise, only walking Rex each day and nothing more, my yoga practice turned restorative, I slept a little more each day, and I watched movies and read books and worked on a jigsaw puzzle. It took about five days of that for me to start feeling more like myself.

On that note, January is, for me, the Season of Energy. I feel reenergized and ready to take on the New Year, with all its many changes that I am just not ready to talk about – time makes you bolder, children get older, I’m getting older too – and yesterday, I took on the task of taking down the decorations and tree, and deep cleaning the house. This is a highly satisfying job to me. I love having All Things Christmas in the house, but I also love the serene feeling of a perfectly clean – except for the paw prints that are constantly on the floor – house. The house feels so much bigger now, and Rex is no longer wagging cards or decorations across the room, while I scramble to pick them up.

Do you remember, years ago, a social media game where people would post three fictional characters, a mix of which represented their personalities? It’s a very interesting window into the psyche, seeing what people chose. For me, I think my personality can best be described as two parts Sally Allbright, and one part each Monica Geller and Buddy the Elf.

I am a person who, like a toddler or a dog, absolutely thrives on routine and ritual. I have mad organizational skills. I love scheduling my days and being in control of them, and figuring out how to fit in the activities and tasks that any particular day requires. In university and grad school, I would schedule my day down to the minute and I would not deviate from it. These days I’m not quite so particular, but if there is something that needs to be done, I am going to do it.

The flip side of this, of course, is that I can be mentally inflexible and I find sudden changes or schedule alterations or additions to be quite distressing. “I’m too structured! I’m completely closed off!” “But in a good way.” Spontaneity is not my strong point, to say the least, but I’m working on it.

This brings me to an Ask Me Anything question from my lovely, darling friend Suzanne (HI SUZANNE): You seem like you are really good at doing things regularly, if not daily: walking, yoga, reading poems, etc. HOW do you do this? Teach me your ways! Well, I am nothing if not structured! I have always been an early-morning person, and I started getting up early when the boys were very small; at that time I generally slept until one of them woke up, around 6:30 or so, and then the mornings felt very chaotic. Someone was always crying or needed breakfast or a diaper change, and the start of the day had me feeling frazzled. It was then that I started waking up really early to go to the yoga studio and practice for an hour. I needed that time to myself; when I got home the boys were just getting up and I felt much more able to cope with the constant demands that is life with little ones. Nowadays of course I don’t have those same demands, but I find that I feel completely unmoored without my daily practice; like I said, I thrive on routine and ritual, and although I don’t go to a studio anymore, my quiet, dark house is perfect for early morning yoga. Since the pandemic started, I have added reading a poem or reading just before my practice; it’s just ONE, so it doesn’t feel overwhelming, and then I can think about it, or not, if it doesn’t resonate, as I practice.

What I am saying is that all of the things that I do on a daily basis are things that I love and make me feel good, and I know that if I omit them from my day I will regret it later. I love being outside and walking, I love getting active and sweaty, I love yoga. Part of the Never Miss A Day is due to my Sally Allbright/ Monica Geller Overly Structured Personality, but some of it is my Buddy The Elf Do Things That Bring Joy personality.

This brings me to New Year’s Goals and Resolutions: I have none. Or, to be more accurate, I have no NEW goals or resolutions; all of mine are evergreen and ongoing. They are either highly specific daily/ weekly tasks, or incredibly unquantifiable states of being. Although, now that I think about it, I might vow to bake more cakes in 2023. I love cake.

Ooooh, maybe I’ll start a Julie and Julia-style blog series, but name it Julie and Nicole, and just bake every cake in this delightful little book. Stay tuned!

Reading: The Year-Long Books

The Daily Stoic. This is one of those daily readings I spoke about; in addition to a poem a day I read one page of this every day in 2022 and honestly, I cannot recommend it. It was absolutely perfect for me back in January, when things were so bleak and grim, because it’s all about controlling your own mind when the world is spiraling out of control. The world was indeed spiraling out of control and these daily readings reminded me that I could change only the things within my own control. It was perfect for that month, and then things went downhill. I found it to be incredibly repetitive and, when I got to December and the monthly theme was Facing Your Own Death, depressing. The entire month was well, we are all going to die, and honestly, who needs that reminder.

Speaking With Spirit. I absolutely loved Agapi’s Wake Up To The Joy In You, and this follow-up book about prayer was good, but not AS good. It was well worth reading – it’s a weekly read – and there was a lot of focus on gratitude and transformation, which I like. It’s important to note that to whom one prays is up to the reader; this is not a specifically-religious book, rather a spiritual one, which I also really like. One can offer a prayer to the universe, if one so chooses.

Should I take this as a sign that I need to deviate from routine?

Weekly Reading

Slouching Towards Bethlehem. This is such an interesting book of essays, mainly based on 1960s California. What a fascinating time and place! More interesting to me, though, was thinking about the nature of these essays, all of which were published in magazines and necessitated many months of on-the-ground research. Long-form journalism is still around but it’s just so dwarfed by our instant 24-hour news cycle. It was fascinating to read these of-the-moment essays and to think of the time put in. Feels a bit dinosaur-like now. The title essay deals with runaway youth in Haight-Ashbury in 1967 and it’s kind of horrifying, to be honest. These kids were so young, living in filth and completely high all the time; some of the older teens had small children, which was incredibly sad. I love Didion’s personal essays and the final one, Goodbye To All That, about her experience as a young woman moving to New York and then returning to California, was my favourite.

Weightless. I heard this woman speaking on a podcast – I think it was Forever 35 – and she was so interesting. This book is comprised of essays, and they are jaw-dropping in their content. Essentially, this woman has heart disease, which was not caused by her weight, but the medical community did not catch it because of her weight. She had weight struggles that started when she was a child; her treatment for severe asthma led to rapid weight gain which led to struggles within the medical community to see past her weight gain. It was the absolute definition of vicious circle. The book itself is tragic and hopeful and also really eye opening. 

The Happiness Project. My friend Elise (HI ELISE) asked if I’d read this, and I had to look at my spreadsheet to ascertain that I hadn’t! I thought I had but no. I have heard so much about Gretchen Rubin, but I haven’t actually read anything by her OR listened to her very popular podcast, so I was going into this completely fresh. So, a few things are all true at the same time: I enjoyed reading this year of monthly resolutions to increase happiness, late December is a great time to read about energizing oneself and vowing to be a better person, and also, about 2/3 of the way through I started to dislike the author. I will tread lightly here, because I know she is beloved by many, and please do remember that this book was written in 2009, and people change a lot in 14 years. I appreciate her honesty about her shortcomings that she wanted to work on, but I have a visceral reaction to people who describe themselves as naturally belligerent and argumentative. And negative. And sarcastic. To be fair, those the things she was working on, but you know what, once I got that visceral feeling I couldn’t un-feel it. Also, I found her tone to be a touch judgy and a bit repetitive. Even still, the book had a good message. None of it felt new or original but I think that’s because it was published so long ago and has influenced dozens of books, pieces, and blogs – which is indicative of its success. Overall, a good read. I am tempted to look into some of her more recent work to see what, if anything, has changed.

So here we are in a fresh new week, month, and year. I have decided to do the Apartment Therapy January Cure, so there will be lots of organizing and decluttering this month; I have a number of posts to write thanks to your Ask Me Anything contributions (and it’s still open, feel free to, indeed, Ask Me Anything!), and, most importantly, I have a big stack of books to get through this week! I hope you all have a fabulous week, this first week of January, and I hope you have resolved to be kind to yourselves first and foremost. xo

Three For Thursday: The “Holiday Questions Answered” Edition

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This week was my last week of yoga classes until January, and I have to say that I have the most wonderful students in the world. I was the recipient of many cards – some hand-drawn – and gifts, as well as a ton of baking. Two of my students in particular brought in giant platters of things to take to the boys; one lady brought in butter tarts and pecan tarts, and one brought in two plates of squares and shortbread. They both know that my boys love tarts and shortbread, and I make neither of them. In fact, the shortbread baker, in December 2020 when everything was shut down, arranged to meet me in a parking lot, in minus 20, to give me a plate of shortbread. It broke her heart, she said, to think that the boys wouldn’t get shortbread because of Covid.

Another student is a leatherworker, and she crafted bracelets and key tags for every student in the Monday afternoon class; the key tags were all embossed with the message Gratitude is the first step to joy, which one of her fellow students had said back in October, and that we all agreed was the most beautiful sentiment. I have thought of it every day since October, and apparently so has the rest of the class.

Aren’t my ladies just the greatest? There have been some ups and downs this week, to be discussed later, but these women really elevated the festive feeling for me. It’s no secret that I love the holiday season, and so I was pretty excited to see two holiday-related questions on my Ask Me Literally Anything form; as a reminder, I have no idea how to close out this form, so please feel free to Ask Me Literally Anything, if you like. If you don’t like, that is perfectly fine too.

  • Colleen (HI COLLEEN) asked: What do you want for Christmas? Well, Colleen, that is a great question. I think I am an easy person to give presents to; I am universally delighted with anything. Typically I have a few books on my list, and I love to receive things like slippers, chocolates, wine, and pretty much anything else. Twenty-four years ago, my husband once gave me a water bottle for Christmas, among other things. It was just a plain plastic Nalgene one, and I still feel nostalgic thinking about it. A water bottle! That we could hike with and I wouldn’t get dehydrated! I am easy to please, clearly. In fact, one of Suzanne’s (HI SUZANNE) questions was what was your worst gift you received and honestly, I couldn’t think of anything. I’m sure I have received gifts that weren’t great, but either I’ve blocked them out or I’ve just never had what I considered a bad gift. That said, I have a few big-ticket items on my wish list this year, and one of them is a Kobo. I used my husband’s decade-old Kindle on our carry-on only trip to Mexico, and while it worked fine, it is not compatible with the Canadian library system. This wasn’t something I discovered on my own, mind you; a number of friends tipped me off when I said I was thinking about a newer version of a Kindle for (hopefully) future travel. I’m hoping for a waterproof Kobo, and also for a tropical vacation in which that waterproof Kobo will come in handy. Another rather large item on my wish list is a new Garmin watch. My current watch is almost four years old now and it does not hold a charge in any meaningful way. I have to charge it at least twice a day, which is FINE, it’s not like anyone is going to die because of it, but it would be nice to not get a “low battery” signal when I am out on a walk. Steps still count even if they aren’t counted, but STILL. I want those steps counted! You understand.
  • Elisabeth (HI ELISABETH) asked: What’s your favourite Christmas tradition? I am going to split this lovely question into two parts. It’s a Three for Thursday, after all, and I only had two specifically Christmas-related questions. One of my favourite things to do in December is to make treats. My sons and I decorate homemade gingerbread people, which on my plate end up being cute smiley people with happy little buttons, and on theirs, obscenely decorated monstrosities with wrestling or some other completely non-Christmassy themes. Hey, it’s fun. I love to make chocolates and bark and truffles, and to gift those to the lovely people in my life. The best baking tradition, though, is my grandma’s gingersnaps. They are my favourite cookies in the world, and I only make them at Christmas. I shared this recipe in 2013 when I had first started working at YMC, and it kind of exploded since then. I baked them on the weekend and I had SEVERAL friends message me to say that they also were making my grandma’s gingersnaps that very weekend, and that they were their favourite Christmas cookies. To say this warms my heart would be an understatement. The recipe is here, (and that link DOES work, despite the strange formatting). Grandma B was not at all a good cook, in fact, I cannot remember anything she made that was at all tasty – she was Scottish/ English, and her cooking really lived up to that cuisine’s reputation – but these cookies? They are incredible.
  • What is your favourite Christmas tradition, part two. I thought about this a lot; we have so many fun little traditions, like watching Elf and Christmas Vacation, decorating the house inside and out, and the disturbing, yet funny, monstrosity that is the boys’ gingerbread house. I settled on the Good Thing Advent calendar. I bought this wooden calendar when the boys were small and I would put a little treat in it every day. When they were a bit older, I stole an idea from a fellow, now defunct, blog and would write a holiday-themed activity on a slip of paper, and they would read each day what that fun activity would be. Doesn’t that sound lovely? I did it once and swore I’d never do it again. Like so many of those grand parenting ideas, it was a giant pain. I found it really hard to come up with twenty-four activities – there are only so many days you can bake cookies and watch Christmas movies – so probably 3/4 of the days consisted of “sledding after school” which was a thing we did every single day in the winter anyway, or “read a Christmas story,” which, again, was a pretty regular occurrence. The next year I just wrote something I liked that they did that day, which was fine. For the past several years, though, all four of us write one good thing that happened to us that day, and we put it in the calendar. On New Year’s, we take out all the slips of paper, put them in a bowl, and take turns reading them. It’s really fun and makes us all feel good, other than the time my younger son drew a note from my husband that said “Nicole looked hot tonight,” which was just awkward for everyone. Some days it can be a stretch, but mostly it’s fun to dig deep and see what little thing made us happy on any particular day.

Do you have any favourite traditions you would like to share? Favourite cookie types? Do you have anything special on your wish list this year? Tell me everything. xo