The Great Judy Blume Re-read

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Thank you all for your lovely and thoughtful comments on Monday’s post about Using The Good Things/ Driving The Ferrari. I feel inspired anew to revel in the things I love and to pass along the things I don’t. Writing it, I thought of the Mary Oliver poem “Storage.”

There’s no one like Mary Oliver. Well, there’s no one like anyone, I guess, but I was trying to segue to there’s no one like Judy Blume. I alluded in Monday’s post to a fun reading project I undertook last week, and that project was a binge of Judy Blume.

To be honest, it all started in February of this year, when I was in Mexico and had a few Judy Blume books on my Kobo. I quickly reread five of her YA books in short succession, and I talked about how brilliant she is at connecting with issues that are important to young people. My dear friend Maya (HI MAYA) sent me some more titles for my birthday, but then I had so many library holds come in, I put them to the side.

Because we are going on vacation soon, I have been pausing most of my library holds so that nothing will come in while I am gone. I got a little overly enthusiastic at hitting the pause button, though, so I didn’t have a whole lot to read. In other words, it was the perfect time to browse my own shelf.

Then Again, Maybe I Won’t. This is one of the titles that Maya had sent me, and it was a really interesting reread. What I remembered from my youth was that this was the book that introduced me to the concept of erections and wet dreams. Nine-year-old me was very confused, particularly with the wording “I felt myself get hard.” What did that mean, I wondered? I went from confusion to horror when I learned what it meant, and realized that this could be happening all around me, all the time. And wet dreams? What kind of a horror show is this? But revisiting this as an adult, I found the story is so much more than just Boner Talk. It’s about class structures, wealth, and, most of all, anxiety. It follows Tony, a seventh-grade boy from a working class Italian family in New Jersey; the family goes from barely making ends meet to being rich, rich, rich. They move to Long Island where Tony’s anxiety goes through the roof, presenting as terrible stomach pains that eventually land him in the hospital. It’s a really interesting story, and I feel like the tagline should be More Than Just Boners.

In The Unlikely Event. I read this in 2017 when it first came out and I had remembered liking it a lot. It is an adult book and it’s based on true events that Judy Blume lived through in the early 50s. In her hometown of Elizabeth, New Jersey, three planes crashed over a four month period, and this book details those crashes and how it affected people in the town. I did NOT like this very much on the reread. There are SO many characters, and it is told in the third person omniscient, and so I found it very tedious and without a lot of the emotionality and character development that I love in a book.

Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret. The classic! I loved it then and I love it now. This is not my first adult reread of Margaret; in fact, my friends Allison, Hannah, and I (HI ALLISON HI HANNAH) wrote a collaborative blog about our respective youths, and I not only reread this classic, but I RECAPPED IT CHAPTER BY CHAPTER. You can read my recap posts here, here, and here if you are interested. Just like with Then Again, Maybe I Won’t, as a young girl I focused on the first-bra-first-period aspect of Margaret, but as an adult I see that it is so much more than that. It’s about religion, fitting in, and finding peace with God in your own personal way. There’s also a lot about friendship, body image, and insecurities. This is well worth the reread! (Yes, this was from the library, but it was actually IN the library and so I didn’t have to put it on hold).

Deenie. This book is my all-time Judy Blume favourite. I pulled out my well-worn copy of the story of a beautiful young girl with scoliosis, who has to wear a brace all day every day. I also recapped this one, and you can read those posts here, here, here, and here. It’s interesting; usually when I reread books from my youth I find I have a lot more sympathy for the parents than I did as a child, but NOT THIS TIME. Deenie’s mother is still terrible.

What a fun little project this was! Of the eight books I’ve read so far in September, seven of them were rereads, six of them total delights. Did you love Judy Blume as much as I did? What was your favourite? Tell me everything. xo

Pulling The Ferrari Out Of The Garage

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Several months ago I listened to a podcast interview of a man who, with the exception of his car and the possessions he had hastily packed into it, lost everything in the Los Angeles fires. He was remarkably sanguine about the situation, saying that although his house and everything in it burned to the ground, he was actually looking forward to collecting the insurance money and starting over again, somewhere less expensive, where he could continue to work remotely.

I am sure there was a complicated journey to get to that place of peace, I am sure he had some mourning and grieving and anger, but I was impressed by this attitude. I am not sure if I would ever get there myself, should I find myself in that kind of situation. But he said that he and his wife, who also works remotely, had no children and at the end of the day, where would their possessions go anyway? The only thing – the only thing! – his wife was sad about was the loss of the family Bible that had recorded births, deaths, and marriages for generations.

But then, he said, what would have happened to it anyway, after they died? The best case scenario, he said, was that eventually that Bible would end up in a secondhand shop, hopefully found by someone who placed value on old books.

Well.

I related this story over dinner and my sons both seemed to think this was a completely normal and reasonable thought process, and maybe it was. We all learned that lesson, my older son said, when we moved. We got rid of something and five minutes later we forgot we ever had it.

I don’t know if that’s depressing or uplifting, but I do think there’s some truth there. What WILL happen to all of our stuff upon our demise? Will anyone want my gnomes? My books? My non-blooming Christmas cactus? Who’s to say. I do know that when we were cleaning out my grandma’s apartment, twenty-five years ago, my cousin handed me yet another dollar store tchotchke and said gravely This is why you should never give your grandma knickknacks for every birthday and Christmas and Mother’s Day. It’s true. Whereas she treasured these gifts from her grandchildren, none of her grandchildren wanted anything to do with the little ceramic unicorns or, in my case, inexpensive brooches from Sears.

I’m not a minimalist, certainly, and I do have some things from both of my grandmas that I value deeply: my framed Desiderata, some old books, a stack of magazines featuring Princess Diana, a piano stool, and an entire set of Lavender Rose china, which I brought out on Friday for an afternoon fondue party with the girls.

The truth is that although I don’t bust out the fancy china very often, I am not a believer in saving things for special occasions. Years ago my friend Swistle (HI SWISTLE) wrote about family heirlooms that literally never got used and spent decades in boxes in order to “save” them. That post affected me deeply, honestly, because what do we have stuff for if we are never going to use it? Swistle wrote “It WOULD be sad if an irreplaceable 1940s plate got broken, it WOULD. But I’m looking at the two possibilities: (1) using the dishes many, many times and enjoying them each time, and ending up with a set that has a few missing/chipped pieces, or (2) never using the dishes, and ending up with a perfect set. That we never see. Because it is in a box.” I don’t think I could possibly add to that.

I think there is a mentality, particularly with people of a certain generation, to want to preserve and keep things because they lived through a time where possessions were so precious and of such great value. I am sure we all had an older relative who covered all the furniture in those clear plastic covers; no seat was comfortable by any stretch of the imagination, but at least the upholstery was preserved! Gorgeous wooden tables covered with ugly wipeable tablecloths, lampshades with the cellophane still on them, all the blinds closed so that nothing fades from the sunlight. Guest towels that would get you killed if you used them, ditto the flower-shaped fancy soaps in the powder room. Whole rooms that no one could go into, lest they become polluted by the people entering in. All of these beautiful things that took a lifetime to amass, and that were, at best, rarely used and never enjoyed, due to the worry that they would get “ruined.”

My friend Elisabeth (HI ELISABETH) just wrote about this on her Patreon: fancy candles, special clothes, handmade quilts all going unused so as to not ruin them. It breaks my heart a little bit; what is the point of having possessions if they never get used? Especially since – and this is also mildly heartbreaking – there is a strong possibility that no one will want them later. I mean, I cannot imagine my sons will ever want my grandma’s china. It’s possible, I suppose, but not probable. The same goes for the stack of Princess Diana magazines; chances are they will end up in the recycling when I shuffle off this mortal coil to join her, may that be many decades in the future. And I would never blame them, I don’t want them saddled with boxes of things that were mine but that they have no interest in.

Listening to the man who lost everything in the fires really sparked something in me; I love my home and all the things in it, I have so many treasures and beautiful art and special things. I would be devastated to lose them. It reinforces my determination to appreciate and use all of them. As my friend Liv (HI LIV) used to say when I’d talk about using Grandma’s china, Pull the Ferrari out of the garage!

Those are words to live by. Use the fancy dishes, drink the expensive wine, eat the good chocolates, wear the silk top or the cashmere sweater or the sexy shoes! Dry your hands on the guest towels after washing them with the specialty soaps! Open up the blinds and let the sunshine in, even if the flooring and upholstery fades because of it!

In a way it reminded me of a show from years ago – maybe it was Ally McBeal? I don’t remember, honestly – in which a character talked about her tricks to keeping her skin young-looking and wrinkle-free: keep facial expressions to a minimum, don’t laugh, and stay out of the sun. Talk about living as grimly as possible! There is such a thing as sunscreen! I suppose it would keep the face pretty youthful; I wouldn’t know, since I resemble the crypt keeper these days, but I’d rather have that than a lifetime of no facial expressions.

It sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? It’s just as ridiculous as having a houseful of things that never get used.

Weekly Reading

I embarked on a Very Special Reading Project this week, which I will write about in a separate post later this week, so I just have one book to talk about today.

Sandwich. I read this last year but wanted to refresh myself since Catherine Newman’s new book, Wreck, is coming out next month and it centres around the family in Sandwich. I love this book. I love the thoughts on menopause, women and their reproductive lives, empty nests, aging parents, marriage, all of it. As you know from last week, I am a Catherine Newman Superfan, and I really love this one.

Speaking of Sandwich Life, today is a very special day – my younger son turns 20! Two decades of joy.

I hope you all have a joyful week – pull those Ferraris out of the garage! Put your (sunscreened) faces to the sun! Pop the champagne! Whatever you’re saving for a special day – today is a special day! xo

If I Had A Billion Dollars

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If you had asked me one month ago what I have in common with Mike Vrabel, head coach of the New England Patriots, I would have stared into space for a moment before responding that we are both humans living on the planet at the same time, but nothing else. That was before my husband, a longtime Patriots fan, sent me a reel in which Mike Vrabel was asked what, outside of football, makes him nuts. His response was twofold: able-bodied people who park in handicapped zones, and PEOPLE WHO LEAVE THEIR SHOPPING CARTS IN THE MIDDLE OF THE PARKING LOT. Mike Vrabel, I salute you. He went so far as to say he actually confronts those people and wishes that he had a car boot to immobilize their vehicles.

Never have I felt so seen, particularly by a football coach.

Earlier in the summer I found myself reading about a certain multibillionaire who rented out Venice for his $50 million dollar wedding, and at the time I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I have so many feelings about the current distribution of extreme wealth in general and this wedding in particular, none of them positive, and I am sure you can well imagine.

But I couldn’t help thinking what I would do personally in the extremely unlikely event that I attain such massive wealth. I find it fascinating to think that, if I had a net worth of $224 billion dollars, I could give away 99.7% of it and still be a billionaire. I could give away 99.9% of it and still be fabulously rich. I could bring clean water everywhere, I could end food insecurity, I could house the unhoused, I could END DEATH BY TUBERCULOSIS. I could do all those things and still have money to fly business class everywhere I want to go.

It’s an interesting thought experiment: what would I do differently, had I so much wealth? Let’s say, in the manner of Steve Martin with his holiday wish for world peace, that I’ve already given away 99.7% of this theoretical wealth and made an enormous positive impact on the world, let’s say I’ve already bought a house for each of my children, let’s say I had a billion dollars and I had to – HAD TO – spend it on myself. What would I do?

For something that is in all likelihood never going to happen, I spent a lot of time thinking about this. I love my home and wouldn’t want to buy a different one, or a vacation house, and I wouldn’t want a new car or even a new piano. I wouldn’t travel more than I do but, as I said, I would definitely fly business class only.

I came up with an idea that I felt was absolutely brilliant, and I raised the topic at the dinner table. My family immediately and without hesitation conjectured that I would a) hire a chauffeur and b) employ a personal chef.

Well, damn. I do want those things! So I guess I have three things I want, the third being my own personal busker. If I was insanely wealthy I would hire a busker to follow me around, anticipating my moods and playing all my favourite songs.

To say my husband and sons were unimpressed with this idea would be an understatement.

I stand by it, though. Can you imagine how fun that would be? The soundtrack of my life brought to life!

All of this was before I knew about Mike Vrabel, though. So now I have a fourth thing I would do if I had a billion dollars to burn: I would hire a Mike Vrabel-sized man to go with me everywhere, in my personally chauffeured car, to confront shopping cart and disabled spot violators, and to use car boots with impunity.

My fantasy expenditures are now getting unwieldy. I’m imagining myself with my personal chauffeur, chef, busker, and Mike Vrabel all going to Superstore to fetch ingredients for the week. I might have to get a bigger car in this scenario. And maybe a second house just to shelter all of my employees. And do I want one busker or two? Or more? I want to be a good employer and maybe I’d have to have these guys work in shifts so they can rest a little between sets. Ah, the stresses of being a make-believe billionaire. First I’d have to save the world, and then I’d have to figure out the sleeping situation of my staff.

Weekly Reading

The Thing Around Your Neck. Oh, this author is so talented! I loved this collection of short stories about Nigeria and its people, gorgeous and brilliant slices of life. There is such a variety of points of view and even a few stories written in the second person. I loved every story.

We All Want Impossible Things. I first read this in 2022 and decided, after hearing Catherine Newman interviewed on a podcast, that it deserved a reread. I have read and loved everything Newman has written, since her days as a Babycentre blogger, when my oldest was a baby. She inspired me to start my own blog! I really love this book about a woman caring for her best friends in her last weeks of life. It’s about grief but so much more than that – it’s about love and friendship and the complicated beauty of hospice. Newman has a new book coming out next month and I cannot wait!

Single, Carefree, Mellow. I read this in 2021; I loved it then, and I love it now. Katherine Heiny is a gift to the world, and this collection of short stories is brilliant and hilarious and thoughtful and witty, and is everything I want in a book. A few of the short stories have the same characters, which is delightful in every way, and every one of the stories is a little slice of life with the most wonderful characters you can imagine. And so funny, she is SO funny. One of my favourite lines in the book – although basically the whole book is my favourite – “She collects garden gnomes…You had an affair with someone who collects garden gnomes.” I laughed until I cried.

I had such a fun and busy week filled with friends, and I am looking forward to more of the same this week. I also received a mock-up of my book cover design, and I cannot WAIT to share it with you. So many people have very kindly asked about details regarding its release, and I don’t have those details yet but believe me, the Boyhouse readers will be the first to know! Take care this week, friends. xo

Detoxing In Ovaries

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Happy September, everyone! Can you believe it?

We have been having the most gorgeous weather; the days are summery and hot, but the early mornings are cooler and lovely, perfect for walking and for wearing t-shirts. I considered a photo project featuring all seventy-six of my tees, but a) that sounds boring, and b) I would almost certainly lose interest after the second day. You’ll just have to imagine them all.

The weather is also perfect for gardening. Friends, I cannot even describe my tomato situation. I harvested my first tomatoes on June 25, and it has been an avalanche of ruby globes since then. I thought the zucchini situation last year was out of control, but that was before 2025, The Year of the Tomato. For at least a month I have been picking at least a big bowl of cherry tomatoes, plus 7-15 Romas, every single day. I am drowning in tomatoes, I texted my friend Sandi (HI SANDI).

Autocorrect, in its wisdom, changed it to I am detoxing in ovaries.

I am going to victim-blame myself by saying that I wasn’t wearing my glasses, but it just occurred to me this very second that maybe there IS some kind of “detox diet” for “ovary cleansing” that involves a lot of tomatoes. Is there such a thing? I don’t want to check, my algorithm is weird enough as it is.

In any case, one cannot live on tomatoes (or ovaries) alone – OR CAN WE? No, probably we can’t – and so I found myself, as I do every week, at the grocery store.

I love peeking into other shoppers’ carts. I feel like it is a vignette of a life, or at least a hint into that person’s weekend plans, as evidenced by the woman who had six bottles of wine, a sheet cake, and at least ten family-sized bags of potato chips. Madam, I salute you, and can I join?

I almost always get into a semi-involved conversation regarding cart contents with other shoppers, and sometimes those conversations are life-changing. For example, one long exchange in the Covid Era led me to abandon almond milk forever and embrace cashew. Another woman told me gravely, and without substantiating evidence, that one should never purchase Boom Chicka Pop from Superstore, only Costco, and since we were at the former, I felt like this was a stealth information operation. I didn’t even have any in my cart, and so how or why we embarked on that topic, I do not know. Maybe she was a mystic.

Last week a lady was behind me in line and I smiled at her, ready to engage in conversation, at which point she looked away quickly and took out her phone. It was a gentle rebuff, so I turned away, but not without checking out the contents of her cart, which consisted only of three 4L containers of sour cream, a bakery box of 18 chocolate chip cookies, and a leopard-print blouse.

Oh, the variety of things one can purchase at Superstore! I’m sure the contents of my own cart would be semi-interesting to someone as nosy as I am; at the very least, someone ALWAYS comments on the volume of bananas I purchase each week. But I found myself dying of curiosity – what does one do with so much sour cream? That amount can’t possibly be for condiment use only! Or can it? What recipe could require 12 litres of sour cream? Is this for a food truck? I have all the questions and no answers, but I hope the woman enjoyed her cookies and is wearing the leopard-print blouse with aplomb.

Weekly Reading

What a great week of reading I had! Winners all around.

Everything Is Tuberculosis. Everything I ever knew about tuberculosis, I learned from Alice Munro stories, the Bronte sisters, a variety of Victorian novels, and Val Kilmer’s Doc Holliday in Tombstone. I found this book, which dives into the infection that kills 1.25 MILLION people annually – yes, today – incredibly fascinating and also incredibly depressing. The author traces the fascinating history of this incredibly long-standing infection, showing how society’s view of it has changed dramatically. At one point it was considered the INHERITED disease of artists and poets, romantically claiming that as one’s body succumbed to “consumption,” one’s soul and mind expanded. Tuberculosis also influenced fashion and beauty standards, as the wasted, thin bodies of women would be paired with alabaster skin, rosy fevered cheeks, and wide glittering eyes. It reminded me of the “heroin chic” of the 90s. Interestingly, once it was discovered not to be an inherited disease but a contagious bacteria, TB’s PR took a dive, going from the disease of the upper class to that of poverty. And that it is, it is an infection that can be dormant until something like trauma, stress, malnutrition, and general impoverished circumstances hit. To this day it is a pandemic, one that could be prevented and helped but is not, due to general greed and lack of caring about things that are not in our faces. I started reading this on the same day I listened to Trolleyology -the science of ethics – on the Ologies podcast, and I can’t help conflating the two and the ethics around not stopping a preventable pandemic. And listen, caveat emptor: I loved this but I would never recommend this to germaphobes or anyone with any kind of health-related anxiety.

Audition. I loved this absolutely wild, mind-bender of a book, the likes of which I have never read before. This was one of the most original books I have ever experienced. It is made up of two parts with all of the exact same characters, same narrator, same point of view, but completely different narratives. I don’t even know how to describe it except that it is an exquisitely written character study of a woman’s life in two incredibly different realities. It could be interpreted in any number of ways but I think it shows the different paths a life can take, and a choice that can force one of those paths to be true. There’s lots of symbolism with regards to marriage, motherhood, and reproductive choices, and I would put another caveat emptor here: this isn’t a book for someone who wants a firm plot, lots of backstory and answers, and a logical timeline. It IS for someone who loves character books, little clues as to symbolic thoughts, and gorgeous writing.

Maggie; Or A Man and A Woman Walk Into A Bar. This was such a beautiful, delightful book about two non-beautiful, non-delightful topics: divorce and cancer. A woman receives a cancer diagnosis shortly after her husband tells her he is having an affair and is leaving her. She names her tumour Maggie, after the Other Woman. It sounds grim and it is – there are two young children involved, the affair comes out of nowhere, her mother died of the same cancer – but it is also strangely joyful and absolutely gorgeous to read. I loved it.

I hope you are all enjoying your long weekend, friends.

Typically there is not much difference for me with regards to long weekends – every weekend is a long weekend and no weekend is a long weekend – but we have had my older son here to stay for a couple of days while his roommate has houseguests and before classes start up again. My younger son started his new job working in the vineyard, so there has been a lot of excitement around here. September is such a Fresh Start Feeling month, even when there’s no Fresh Start for me personally. Have a beautiful week, everyone! xo

Nicole’s Favourite Things: The Memories of My Yoga Students Edition

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For the past few weeks, I have been doing a careful line read of my upcoming novel Inhale Exhale for final submission. It’s a book about a middle-aged yoga teacher who is looking for love, and while reviewing it, this middle-aged former yoga teacher has been reflecting a lot on the hundreds of students I have taught over the years. All of them meant something to me; some of them meant a LOT to me and have impacted me to this day. This month’s Favourite Things is an homage to them.

Nicole’s Favourite Things: The Memories of My Yoga Students Edition

Boney M(acPherson)

Every winter – starting in October, because it was Calgary – I would caution my senior ladies about slipping on icy sidewalks. The best way to recover from a fall is to not fall in the first place, I would say as we worked on balance and core strength. But sometimes that is not enough; one of the ladies told me about a friend who fell and broke her hip, but it wasn’t the fall that broke it – her hip spontaneously broke, causing her to fall.

I’ve been concerned about my own bone density for years, and I work hard at improving it through strength training and lots of calcium and Vitamin D. I became curious about the weighted vests I had been seeing all over the internet, and decided to get one of my very own.

I feel RIDICULOUS in it, like I am Sipowicz about to bust into a sketchy-looking apartment without a warrant. With my waist leash, fire hydrant-shaped poop bag carrier, cross-body bag, and workout clothes, I look deranged. But hopefully deranged with strong bones!

I really like the functionality, if not the looks; it has little sandbag-weights that can be added or subtracted, and with all of them the vest is 18 pounds. Is it working? Who knows! I don’t have a home bone density testing machine. But I feel like it can’t hurt.

Entering My Elastic Waistband Era

My senior ladies, such a lovely, fun bunch, also talked a lot about the joy of elastic waistbands, and they were right. Last month I bought a pair of Lululemon Dance Studio Crops, and whoa nelly. They might just be the most comfortable pants ever.

I mean, they LOOK comfortable. It’s not like these are sexy structured pants that surprise everyone by being comfortable. But I am embracing this New Pants Era of mine. In fact, I bought a second pair in black!

Judy, My Guiding Star

I have talked before about Judy, the octogenarian who embodies everything I wanted in life, and everything I wanted to BE in life. I adore her. Once, she visited her sister in Nashville, and brought me back this little set of bracelets, because they reminded her of me. They go perfectly with my new pants!

It’s All About The Literary Merch

I taught Yoga for Stroke Survivors for a few years, and one of my students was the personification of one of those before/ after yoga memes.

I mean, I don’t blame him. This man suffered a debilitating stroke in his forties; he went from being someone with a successful and lucrative career who enjoyed international travel and home improvement projects to having difficulties with things like walking and, um, filtering his language. He was angry. Every Thursday afternoon he would come blustering in to the studio, speaking VERY loudly about those fucking morons at the City, they can’t even get the buses to run on time, and no one cares about the fucking ICE on the sidewalks, he slipped and fell, what the FUCK, and by the way, his goddamn neighbour won’t even shovel HER sidewalks, and she can’t hire anyone because she’s POOR and it’s not HIS fault she’s poor, why should he have to deal with HER problem. It wasn’t something you’d expect in a yoga studio, let’s put it that way. But after yoga? After yoga he was an absolute doll. He would be laughing and joking and speaking kindly to everyone. Really, it made the job very satisfying, if a bit trying at times.

One day he came in with a shirt that read Nolite te bastardes carborundorum, and I asked him about it. Don’t let the bastards get you down! he said to me, and two things popped into my head; first, that saying must have been extremely resonant for him, as he felt pummeled down by the bastards – his stroke, the city, his neighbour, literally everyone in his way – every day. But also it seemed very familiar to me in some way, like I had seen it before but couldn’t place it, and it wasn’t until 2020, when I reread The Handmaid’s Tale in preparation for The Testaments, that I remembered.

A few months ago I saw this tee at Redbubble – I credit the popularity of the TV series which I have not watched and I WILL not, do not come at me – and I thought YES. I thought of my student but I also thought of the political situation we are living through now, particularly in Elbows Up Canada, and I thought I must have this.

On another literary note, I have been meaning to talk about my Most Ardently tee, which I love.

It goes great with the mug my son gave me for my birthday:

I have heard Austen novels criticized as being nothing but fluff, just stories of women seeking husbands, but I think that is an extremely ignorant and narrow view. Her novels are about so much more than that! Yes, there is a lot of marriage talk, but what could be more economically powerful for women throughout time? Women had literally no power at all, no choices, no money, no ability to hold property. Poor Mrs Bennett is universally thought to be a ridiculous figure, but let’s just think about this for a moment: if her husband predeceased her, she’d be homeless. She had five daughters and not one of them would be able to live in their home once their father died. The only thing that could be done is to have at least one of them marry in a financially advantageous way. LITERALLY THERE WAS NOTHING ELSE, NETHERFIELD PARK IS LET AT LAST. The whole inciting incident of Sense and Sensibility is that the women WERE homeless after the death of Mr Dashwood! They had to rely on the kindness of a distant relative who let them live in a cottage at a reduced rent because they couldn’t even take the dishes from their house that they had lived in for twenty years. So DO NOT TELL ME that marriage wasn’t an important economic decision for women, because it WAS. Do NOT disparage Miss Jane Austen, because I will not have it! NOT ON MY WATCH. Also, she is the wittiest writer that ever lived. I will hear no arguments! I will also enjoy my Jane Austen merch!

Woo, I got a little worked up, I have to take a breath here. Let me calm down by looking at this face:

Heads Have Rolled For Less

On the topic of women and economic power and “things that seem fluffy but are far from it,” I am obsessed – obsessed! – with The Gilded Age. It’s by the creator of Downton Abbey, of which I have watched every episode and every (not great) movie, and you can really tell the similarities between the two series. There’s even an American heiress marrying a cash-poor English Duke – shades of Cora! The Gilded Age has it all: high drama, secrets, betrayal, upstairs/ downstairs people, making money, losing wealth, living the American Dream, fabulous older ladies with complicated storylines. It’s all about society and power and oh my god, the costumes. The costumes are SO good, there are so many wild hats, and we are now done Season Three and I’m a bit bereft. I hope this show runs for another ten seasons. IT IS AMAZING, I love it, the writing is SO sharp and tight, and did I mention the costumes?

The stories are still pretty relevant today, honestly.

I love how Julian Fellowes really creates characters for older women with a lot of depth, romance, and wisdom.

Outfit of the Month

First, I would like to stave off any criticism about my clotheshorse ways by giving you an old/ new outfit:

YES THOSE ARE THE NEW BLACK COMFORTABLE PANTS. They are just as comfy as the beige ones, but the lady working at the library told me I “always look so elegant and pulled together” while I was wearing them, so score one for elastic waistbands. Speaking of comfortable, those sandals are Skechers circa 2022, and I don’t know how old the top is, but I bought it at Jacob, which went defunct in 2015.

Isn’t it cute, with the little ruffles? Proof that I’m not just wildly shopping, I like to hold onto pieces for years and years.

Ah, I have such lovely memories of all my students, from the enthusiastic Ashtangis to the devoted Hatha practitioners, from the Seniors and the Stroke Survivors to the chilled-out Restorative students, from the Strength and Tone ladies to the Thursday Morning Foundation class, every single student was special to me and I learned so much from all of them. Happy almost-long-weekend, friends. I hope it’s wonderful. xo

Our Best Friends

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As you might imagine, I very frequently get asked for book recommendations. As you might not imagine, I am almost as frequently completely at a loss for book recommendations.

I am loathe to recommend anything across the board, or really, anything at all unless I know a person well and I know their reading taste. Everyone is so different, and just because I love a book most certainly does not guarantee someone else will. In fact, my experience has been that, very often, books I love are met with dislike, boredom, or, at best, neutrality and polite confusion as to what I love about it.

And the same goes for me. I often find myself with unpopular opinions about popular books. I have a few friends who know me well enough to never recommend dystopia, for example, or fantasy. I sometimes enjoy a thriller but rarely a mystery, and horror books are far too scary for me to even contemplate.

But there is one book that I really do think every woman can benefit from. I first read it five years ago TODAY, and it completely transformed my life.

I picked up Your Body, Your Best Friend at the library in August 2020, and after I finished I immediately ordered a copy for my shelves. The author is a yoga teacher and a Zen Buddhist practitioner, and her life journey was so resonant and relatable that it felt like someone had actually looked into my soul and then written it into a book.

The book explores the concept of maitri, or loving-kindness, as practiced towards oneself. If we cannot practice maitri with ourselves, we cannot truly practice it with the world. We as women are conditioned to make ourselves small, to not take up space, and to punish ourselves or withhold joy if we don’t measure up to a certain standard. We are taught to compare ourselves to other women and to compete with them, as if the world is a cake with finite pieces, and we will only get a piece if someone else doesn’t.

I cannot overestimate how significant this book was for me. I looked at myself – really looked deeply – and realized that I had been unkind to myself lo those many years.

I have had a lot of personal growth in five years.

The moment I finished the book I vowed to never weigh myself again, and I still haven’t, five years later. That was the most concrete action I took; the rest of the lessons that I internalized were less obvious, until I reread the book this week. I have reclaimed joy in movement and joy in food, I have recognized the need for body intuition and for rest, and, crucially, I have realized that our bodies are always changing, along with our minds, our emotions, and our perspectives, and this is a beautiful thing.

Movement for joy!

Taking joy in food and movement, rather than seeing those things as punishments or rewards, is a really big thing.

Food is joy, full stop.

There was something else in the book that I found devastatingly relatable: the author’s height and age of puberty. I was also a tall girl and an early bloomer, and if you think that being 5’7″ and having a C-cup bra in seventh grade sounds good, think again. To this day when I see young teens who could “pass” for twenty, I close my eyes and say a little prayer for them, because I know what that is. I know the feeling of body hatred, I know the intense desire to be smaller, to be thinner, to be less curvy. I know what it is to wear giant sweatshirts and to walk with a slouch. I know what it is to be sexualized at a young age, to garner attention and not know what to do with it, and most of all, to feel shamed for it. I know that deep body shame.

I think we all, no matter what our experience, wish we could go back in time to love our younger selves, to wrap those shamed and self-hating girls up and keep them safe. It occurred to me that there is a way to do this.

It occurred to me that the menopause transition is very similar to puberty. In both cases, there are changes that are completely beyond our control, that make us somewhat unrecognizable to ourselves. Wild things are happening to our skin, our faces, our bodies. There are hormonal ebbs and surges, there are insecurities, and, of course, there is shame.

Until someone invents a time machine in which we can all hop on and hug our younger selves and reassure them that they are, truly, beautiful inside and out, why don’t we all do something radical and accept our truly beautiful selves as they are right now. Why don’t we all accept that our bodies are going to change as we journey throughout this life, and acknowledge that for the precious privilege that it is.

Just like we cannot truly show up for others until we show up for ourselves, let’s practice loving-kindness to ourselves NOW, as a gift to those young, insecure girls that we were, back when we were thirteen.

Weekly Reading

I am continuing to dissociate from the world by reading three books a week, so I have a couple I want to talk about in addition to Your Body, Your Best Friend. But first! Big news! I had a DNF! I started The Heart of Winter, but after reading This Is A Love Story last week, I just could NOT. I could not read about another long and tumultuous marriage that ends when one half of the couple gets a terminal diagnosis and dies. Instead, I read…

One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot. Instead of The Heart of Winter, how about a book about a 17-year-old girl with a terminal illness who befriends a similarly-dying 83-year-old in the hospital where they are both soon to meet their demise! CHEERFUL. But it is a lovely book about two friends who decide, in the hospital’s art program, to make 100 paintings for each of their 100 years, telling their life stories along the way. There are parts that you REALLY have to suspend disbelief – would a father truly just leave his 17 year old daughter in the hospital to die alone? would a nurse really be so mean to a dying teenager just because she wants to go to the chapel to visit the chaplain? how did Margot pay her bills if all she ever did was be an animal activist? – but it is just a sweet, cute book about cross-generational friendship.

Abigail and Alexa Save The Wedding. Continuing with this week’s unofficial theme – friendship – two very different ladies find themselves soon to be related via holy matrimony…in this case, they are the mothers of the bride and groom. One is a very West Coast Greek Single Mother, the other is East Coast WASP Of Reduced Means, and all is going pretty well until their children decide to CALL OFF THE WEDDING! No! Not after they’ve already secured the venue! And bought dresses! This cannot stand! The two women work together, along with a group of ladies called the Merry Widows, to bring the couple back together. Capers ensue! Let’s not overthink this, it’s just a fun, fast read.

I hope you have all had a lovely week! Mine has been filled with reading, obviously, and also a LOT of time in the garden. Lord have mercy, I have more tomatoes than I could have ever imagined. This year’s tomato is last year’s zucchini, let’s put it that way. And believe you me, I have a lot of zucchini. Lovely problems to have, for sure. xo

Enjoying What I Have

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I am constantly striving to be really mindful in terms of consumption and shopping, to be thoughtful in my purchases and to buy only what I actually need. Lately, though, I have been sliding into Mindless Clothes Shopping Territory, and I feel that it should be curbed.

It started innocently enough. Out of necessity, I have bought a lot of clothes over the past nine months, post-giant-closet-purge. Since my body changed shape, and so much of my wardrobe no longer fit in the way I wanted it to, I replaced many items with more suitable ones. I don’t regret that or feel bad about it, but I do think that “needing new jeans” didn’t really need to translate to “I just bought six pair,” and yet here we are. Wanting a new little black dress didn’t really mean that I should buy three, and I probably didn’t need five pair of capri pants and several tees and workout pieces. But again, here we are.

My bid to love my clothes again has led to me buying a lot of clothes.

The thing is, though, I do love my clothes, especially my new ones, and the truth is that I didn’t really need to hang onto things that were almost twenty years old and were ill-fitting into the bargain. I can now say with confidence that I love everything in my closet, I would happily don anything in there and feel good about it. I’m pleased with the state of my wardrobe but the nine-month shopping spree needs to end.

It’s gotten to the point where I’m just mindlessly popping onto my favourite shops’ websites, Just To Look, which of course leads to Oh That’s Cute, which then leads to Add To Cart and Checkout, which is becoming a problem. How many tees does one woman need? I don’t know but probably not seventy-six. And that doesn’t even include tanks or yoga tops.

Clearly, my tops were not part of the Great Closet Purge, and also, it’s time to reign it in. I need a reset, but I’m not sure what form that will take, exactly. I do not want to do another no-shopping challenge, if only because my husband might leave me and my mother will disown me if I attempt that again. I don’t want to say I’m not going to buy anything for x amount of time because what if my body changes again? I mean, I hope not, because this could become a very expensive endeavour, replacing clothes constantly. But I didn’t see the changes coming the first time, so it’s possible it could happen again. Also, I want to feel free to buy a new parka, if needed, or winter boots, and not feel shame about it, the way I still feel about the 100-Day Challenge, even though I’ve played piano for more than 100 days this year, just not consecutively.

So it’s time to incorporate more mindfulness into my shopping habits. I am going to make a real effort, going forward, of shopping my closet before doing anything else. I have so many beautiful things, I really do not need more. Everything fits now, nothing needs replacing, I do not need one more thing no matter how cute it is.

A few months ago, Sarah (HI SARAH) casually mentioned that she was going to enjoy what she has and those words echoed in my mind; I have been thinking about it a lot since then. We all know how exciting it is to get a new little something, whether it be a lipstick or panties or even some kind of home good, but where does it end? I DON’T NEED SEVENTY-SEVEN TEES.

I was talking with someone about Swedish Death Cleaning, and while I don’t expect to die anytime soon – or, at least, I hope not – the last thing I want when I shuffle off this mortal coil is to leave behind a landfill’s worth of clothing items. Also, I just realized that I read that book in 2018, which is startling. I thought it was during the pandemic! What is time.

Anyway. I am going to try to retrain my brain, which has unravelled in the past nine months, and which USED TO BE good at mindful shopping, to just Enjoy What I Have. I have so much! I’m going to enjoy it.

Weekly Reading

Ruby-Fruit Jungle. I picked this up on a whim at the library, and I did not enjoy it at all. It’s a landmark lesbian coming of age book, but I found it to be a tedious and dull read. 

Dream Count. Wow. Wow. This novel was so beautiful, so heartbreaking, so moving. I thought about it constantly, even when I wasn’t reading it. At one point I was gasping for breath, it was such an incredible story with the most complex fleshed-out characters. It begins in the pandemic and ends in the pandemic, and in between are the stories of four African women whose lives are intertwined in different ways. When something terrible happens to one of them, we see how unfair the world is not only to the less-privileged, but also to those we “other.” I found the storytelling from four points of view to be absolutely engrossing and the character I liked the least in the beginning became the most interesting and sympathetic one to me. Many lines of note stood out to me, such as “I look at her and think that it isn’t about this particular rape. It is about any rape at all. Ahemen prefers men. In the face of any rape story, she will craft for men the most gorgeous of excuses, and for women her instinct will be distrust.” I absolutely have known women like this in my life. The description of early pandemic days, when we were all conjecturing as to what to do, how to avoid being ill, what news we all had, is so very real. If you, like me, enjoy character-driven books about complicated women, multiple points of view, and absolutely stunning writing, you will love this book.

This Is A Love Story. As a woman dies of cancer, she and her husband recall their life together. This book is very moving not because they lived an idyllic, romantic, perfect life, but because they didn’t. It is a very real story about a very real marriage with ups and downs: work stress, living a creative life, paying the bills, postpartum depression, an affair, and, above all, a very strained and distant lifelong relationship between the woman and her only son. The writing style is very unique and interesting; much of it is written in the second person, which is a rare choice, and the rest of it is told from a few different points of view. My favourite part about this was not the story about the couple, but the little snippets about all the people moving through the physical centre of this story, which is Central Park. I often look at the people moving around me and think about what their stories could be. We all have a story housed within us.

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Upon discovering my Great Tee Collection, I fielded a couple of questions from my family. From my younger son: do you WEAR all of them? The answer to that is yes, although some get worn more than others. From my husband: how long did it take you to amass that many? I would say about fifteen years; I hang all my shirts to dry and I try to buy nice quality items, so they last a long time. But the long and the short of it is that I am now on a self-imposed shopping hiatus! I hope I can keep to it, and that my bad habits haven’t stuck. I hope you all have a beautiful week. xo