Smash That Subscribe Button

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Back when the kids were in elementary school, my favourite fundraiser – even considering my eight solid years running the Scholastic Book Fair twice annually – was the magazine fundraiser. I loved choosing magazine subscriptions and I loved the getting the happy little surprise in the mail a couple times a month.

The mail! Sob. Canada Post is currently on strike and I am just hoping it gets resolved soon. All my holiday cards are ready to go when the strike is over (GODSPEED), but in the meantime, last week pre-strike I mailed several (non-David-penis) postcards, and I have honestly no clue where they are in the mail process. If you receive one, will you please let me know?

Anyway. Back in the day I had quite a few magazine subscriptions and I loved flipping through the glossy pages. I still have pages of recipes I tore out of Canadian Living and I would incorporate interesting postures from Yoga Journal into my classes. My mother-in-law gifted me a subscription to O Magazine for my birthday for over a decade, which is a lot of What I Know For Sure. That is where I got the idea for Nicole’s Favourite Things. I’m just like Oprah! Except for a few small differences.

Of course I don’t subscribe to print magazines anymore – who does? – but I realized that I do have a lot of subscriptions in lieu of that: podcasts, newsletters, and, of course, blogs. Every once in a while I will do a housecleaning to unsubscribe from such things that no longer interest me or bring me joy. I was doing this the other day – why does Substack automatically sign you up for newsletters you may be interested in? I’m not! Why did I think that podcast that spirals me into despair was a good idea? It isn’t! – when I started thinking about subscriptions I actually pay for. There is a lot of free content out there, but there are a few things that I value enough to pay money for.

O-oooohhh Listen To The Music

As a family we have the paid plan for Spotify, and it is worth every penny. Sometimes I think of Teenage Nicole with her tape recorder, trying to catch songs on the radio to record mix tapes. There would always be some DJ chatter before or after the song, or the entire opening bars would be missed completely as I scrambled to record. I had mix tapes made from friends’ cassettes or, in some cases, vinyl albums, and the sound quality would be just as good as one could expect. If someone told Teenage Nicole that she would spend her forties listening to any song she wanted, no matter how obscure, no matter how niche, no matter how, frankly, weird, at any time, well. Teenage Nicole would have been thrilled.

In addition to that, I allow myself one, and one only, Patreon subscription to a podcast. My rules for choosing this podcast are threefold: it must be independently produced, it must have bonus content for Patreon subscribers, and it must be something that actively makes my life better. Currently, this subscription belongs to Forever 35, but before that, it was Gen X, This Is Why, which I only stopped subscribing to because they ended the podcast.

Content With The Content

I really believe that writers should be paid for their work, but also, a person could go broke paying for all the good content out there. I have a number of free subscriptions to Substack newsletters, but I pay for two: Laura Bray’s The Cozy Library, and the Fug Girls’ Drinks With Broads.

I have been a Laura Stan for many years now – her writing is so gorgeous, and you must, you MUST sign up for her newsletter, at the very least her free edition – and I am lucky enough that she is now not only a good friend of mine, but also an inspirational writing partner!

As for the Fug Girls, I have loved their fashion commentary and celebrity gossip for years, but they offer a lot of bonus content for paid subscribers, including deep dives into weird vintage cookbooks and tours through really obscure museum gift shops. In other words, content that is right up my alley.

Language, People

Time has no meaning anymore and so I can’t tell you how long ago, exactly, my son and I upgraded to the paid family plan for Duolingo, but I am currently on a 994 day streak with 65 weeks in the Diamond League, so I’m guessing it’s probably a couple of years ago. But how worth it that upgrade was! I spent six months prior to our trip to Italy learning Italian, which came in very handy. I refreshed my high school French before we went to Quebec, and I can now converse (albeit slowly) in Spanish. I don’t follow anyone on Duolingo except my son, so that he and I can go on “quests” together each week. Bonding!

Beauty…

Speaking of quests, I have been on a lifelong one for Hair Happiness. I could probably employ a therapist for a significant amount of time just to talk about hair issues, but instead I use that money for a couple of hair-related subscriptions that have improved my life immeasurably: Nutrafol and Prose. I’ve talked at length about Nutrafol and I will say this: in 2022, I was in a very low emotional state about my thinning hair and bald spots. I mean, obviously! No woman wants to go bald! But since starting the supplement I have had so much less hair shedding, and a lot of hair growth. It really worked for me and I wish they would sponsor this blog because it is expensive. Worth it! But expensive. I have a six-month subscription because, being in Canada, I have to pay for shipping and this way I am only charged for it twice annually.

I just had a sudden feeling of panic: Nutrafol comes via Canada Post. Pardon me while I go do some ujjayi breathing and reassure myself that the strike will be over by the time my next subscription comes. Breathe. Breathe.

Anyway. I also have a subscription to Prose hair products, which I love. I also love that I can pause the subscription or change the amount of time between deliveries, depending on how fast or slow I’m going through them. For someone who is very, very sensitive about her hair, these two product lines have been life-changing.

…and The Beast

Sometimes I feel low-level guilt that Barkley was the recipient of fancy, all-natural dog food that I had to pick up in a specialty store, whereas Rex gets Purina One. What can I say? Rex is almost 100 pounds and goes through five cups of dog food a day, to Barkley’s one and a half, which certainly factors into the decision. Well. I never once brushed Barkley’s teeth nor did I walk him for ninety minutes a day, so I guess things even out.

Because Rex goes through so much food I buy the 14 kilogram bags, which last about six weeks. Because of their awkward size and shape, I find them nearly impossible to lift and maneuver into a grocery cart. Once I tried to heave the bag into the bottom of a Superstore cart, and ended up accidentally launching the cart – sans dog food – down the aisle. I now use the subscribe-and-save function at Amazon; I don’t have to think about it, the food is always available, and I only have to drag it to the pantry if no one else is home to lift it.

Weekly Reading

Long Island Compromise. The very first thing you have to know is something I discovered about 1/4 of the way through the book: “Long Island Compromise” is a euphemism for “doing it up the butt.” What a wild title, and yet it is so appropriate, as basically everyone in this book is getting fucked up the ass, mostly figuratively, but also in some cases literally. The second thing you have to know is that this book is a work of art. I can’t remember the last time I read something that is such a statement about society without being a tiresome bore of a lecture. This book MOVES, and the characterizations are all so incredible. I could not tell from one page to the next where it was going to go. It starts out with the kidnapping and subsequent return of a Jewish family’s patriarch, and the remainder of the book deals with the fallout from that one-week incident. It deals with wealth and inherited wealth, trauma and inherited trauma, class, secrets, and viciously brutal choices and decisions. At first glance this book is about the old adage about wealth-building, in that “the first generation builds the house, the second generation lives in the house, and the third generation burns the house down.” But it’s so much more than that. Plus, it is hysterically funny; a few times I laughed so much my husband thought I was reading David Sedaris. I cannot say enough how much I adored this book. It’s absolutely brilliant. Big thanks to the beautiful and talented Suzanne (HI SUZANNE) for getting me to bump this book up on my TBR, and for being amenable with all my messages about it (Suzanne, omg, it means doing it up the butt!).

After Annie. This was a moving story about the year following the sudden, early death of a woman, and how the new world is navigated by her husband, four children, and best friend. It was well-written and compelling, but whoa, I have read way too many books lately that deal with the aftermath of untimely death. I think this is my fifth in less than a month. Time for something light, or, at the very least, something that does not discuss the devastation that results from a person dying prematurely and unexpectedly.

I have a pretty fun and exciting week ahead of me: it’s Full On Festive Season around here, and so the tree is going up, I have a very fun outing with the girls, and holiday baking and treat making has officially started. Yesterday I baked a warm gingerbread cake with caramel sauce, and it was absolutely perfect – the recipe was from my friend Julie’s cake cookbook (HI JULIE). My son very kindly reminded me that I have had this book for almost two years now and STILL haven’t made every recipe, as I have vowed to do. I’ll get there! One cake at a time. I hope you all have a delicious, festive week. xo

The Books I Read On Vacation: Italy 2024

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As a general rule I vastly prefer paper books to an e-reader, but when it comes to travel, I am devoted to my Kobo. It’s just so brilliant; I can take many books with me, without taking up any luggage space. I had been happily curating my library hold list so that my Kobo would be populated with books with a variety of expiry dates. I had it perfectly planned.

One week before we left there was a huge cybersecurity breach at the Calgary Public Library. My Kobo is linked to my old Calgary card, and suddenly I couldn’t access the account. To this day, the library hasn’t recovered; apparently all the CPL branches are currently analog, with old-school paper due date slips and stamps, and the online system remains down.

Fortunately, Libby was still working and I was still – eventually – able to download books, but I learned something important: my Kobo will work with one library card and one library card only. Since I already had several books downloaded from the Calgary system, I nervously kept things as-is, and hoped for the best.

Another thing I learned about travelling with a Kobo: if there is a problem, you’re fucked. Well, “fucked.” We were at the Rome airport, ready to return home, and my Kobo froze. I couldn’t select books. I couldn’t change screens. I couldn’t even power it down. I was looking down the barrel of five hours of airport time plus eleven hours of air travel with no reading material.

My husband pried my Kobo out of my panicking hands and, looking down the barrel of dealing with me with no reading material for sixteen hours, bossily told me to just go buy a goddamn book! I grumpily went to the little airport kiosk, found their English section, and spent fifteen euro on a book I didn’t really want but was the best available option. WASTED fifteen euro, I should say, because by the time I returned to my husband with the book, he had somehow managed to power it off and back on. I stared at the blinking screen, manifesting, and ended up with a perfectly functioning Kobo for the remainder of the trip, along with a book that is currently sitting on my bookshelf, unread.

My husband told me it was not a waste at all, instead, it was an insurance policy against such a thing happening on the flight.

The tl;dr of this is that I managed to read a lot of books while in transit. Some were great! Some, not so much.

The Books I Read On Vacation

Three Apples Fell From The Sky. I did enjoy this fable about a tiny Armenian village, with all the friendships and foes and interesting lives, but I think it could have really benefited from a listing of the characters. There were so many characters and they were all intertwined in a complicated way – I kept getting confused as to who was who and how they were related. It also jumps into a lot of flashbacks, so I wasn’t totally clear on what time period I was reading about at any given time. Still, a charming and sweet read.

Summer of ’79. Okay, I got this on my Kobo so I don’t even know if this is a proper book or not. This short, cute, quick read is an addendum to the book Summer of 69, which I haven’t read, but that didn’t really matter. It wasn’t hard to follow, but I probably would have enjoyed it more had I read the first. It’s a fun read filled with 70s fashion and pop culture references, which sealed the deal for me.

In Love. This was a very sad memoir, about a woman whose husband wanted to die by medically assisted suicide after his Alzheimer’s diagnosis. It was a very sad description of the search to do so as well as an exploration of his decline. Woof. It was rough to read, and it really made me think we need to do better for people in this situation, on every level.

The Authenticity Project. “Everyone lies about their lives. What would happen if you shared the truth instead?” So asks The Authenticity Project, a little notebook that makes its way around a group of people leaving friendship, love, and self-acceptance in its wake. This is a truly charming and heart warming story about friendship and love, bringing together an unlikely cast of characters. What a good read! Thanks to my dear friend Nicole (HI NICOLE) who always knows what I like to read.

Under The Tuscan Sun. What could be more appropriate, I thought, than reading this book while I’m in Tuscany? I thought this would be a wonderful romance, and then on discovering it’s basically a memoir, I imagined it would be similar to the very delightful A Year In Provence. Friends, how wrong I was. This book about a couple buying and renovating a property in Tuscany, though lyrically written, is incredibly boring. I desperately wanted to DNF but I forced myself to finish because I AM IN TUSCANY DAMMIT. But alas. There are some good food descriptions but otherwise this was a snore. I did enjoy reading about flying in the 90s, when you could bring whole bottles of olive oil in your carryon. That, my friends, was the highlight of this book. If you’re going to tell me the movie is great, I will believe you, because I looked up the film description and it wasn’t anything at all like the snoozefest I read.

Here After. This author is from Calgary! It is so fun to read about little landmarks and spaces around my old hometown. However, this is not a FUN book, it’s a very sad and vulnerable memoir about a woman whose husband literally dropped dead at age 32. This is a book about grieving and dealing with the shock of a sudden, horrible loss. It is also a tough read, and no, I don’t know why I was reading grief memoirs on a trip of a lifetime to Italy. Well, yes I do, it’s because that’s when the holds came in.

One Of Us Is Lying. Speaking of library holds, I was getting perilously low on reading material, and I still had several train rides and 16 hours of airport and plane transit to get through, so I delved desperately into the “skip the line” loans. This was available, so I downloaded it. But I’m so glad I did. This is a very fun, Agatha Christie meets Breakfast Club story about five teens in detention – and then one of them dies. The remaining teens are under suspicion! But who did it? This was just super fun, and I really enjoyed it.

Abide With Me. I love Elizabeth Strout and how she perfectly captures a certain theme and feeling. This is about a small town minister in the late 50s, who is grieving the sudden loss of his young wife (related: yes, this is a surprising number of books on death and widowhood to be reading). Anyway, as with all Strout’s books there are so many layers to these seemingly simple lives. “This kind of thing gave the women something to look forward to, especially now that the days were shorter and darker, and the boredom of changing sheets or cleaning a bathroom could sometimes mushroom into a private despair before noontime even arrived.” I MEAN. Also, wisdom: “But he thought of George telling him that the ability to receive was as great as the ability to give, and so he simply said thank you.”

Instructions For A Heatwave. It’s the UK heatwave of 1976 and everyone’s losing it a little…especially the recently retired man who just leaves for the day and doesn’t come back. I enjoyed this story of an Irish family living in England, who have secrets and alliances and grudges, but come together to deal with their father’s disappearance. 

In notable news, I watched an entire movie on one of my flights (No you didn’t! my son said. Wait, did you really?). It was a French-Canadian production with subtitles, called Une Femme Respectable. It was not what one might call an action packed movie, and yet I was so invested in it that I GASPED and said “NO, don’t do it!” out loud at one part. I may have been the only person on the entire flight, and maybe on any flight ever, watching it, but I did really enjoy it. This week I started a long-anticipated book and it does NOT disappoint. But I’ll tell you about it next week. xo

The People I Meet On Vacation

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On the very first leg of our journey to Italy, as we settled ourselves into on the plane, three women took their seats in the row in front of us. They were all very attractive and stylish, and approximately ten to twelve years my senior. One of them turned around and informed us that they would be connecting to Rome, on a two week girls’ trip. We are going to Rome too, I began, but it was clear that this woman was interested in monologue, not conversation. She continued to talk, informing me that on her last long-distance flight, she met the Man Of Her Dreams, who was on his way to give a speech to the United Nations. Before I could respond, she said that he hadn’t returned her phone calls yet but that was probably because he was doing medical work in the Amazonian rainforest. The best thing is, she continued, he didn’t wear a wedding ring.

I glanced at her companions, who were silently staring straight ahead.

It was a lot of information to process in ninety seconds, but by the time we landed in Calgary for our connection I had mentally sketched out an outline for a novel based just this conversation, if one could call it a conversation. I also considered my husband, who rarely, if ever, wears his wedding ring. Perhaps the two of us appeared to be on some kind of illicit, Me and Mrs. Jones-style trip of our own.

I love meeting people and learning their stories, and rarely do I get such a complete character sketch in such a short period of time. I always want to know more: where are they going, what are they doing, what are their lives like? I wondered this about the young English woman with a heavy Manchester accent who boarded the Vaporetto in Venice, with the largest wheeled duffle bag I had ever seen. She wore an enormous, but cozy, cream fleece sweatsuit, her ponytail secured with an absolutely gigantic coordinating cream scrunchie. She had two male friends with her and talked incessantly for the entire ride, so of course I listened in. I brought my speaker, she said, patting a small bag by her feet, So we can keep the sound UP. What sound, I wanted to ask, where are you staying that you can do that? That’s a nice place, isn’t it? she suddenly gestured around her. All those green umbrellas. What a specific detail! My head whipped around, looking at all the Venetian buildings, unable to see one green umbrella. What green umbrellas? I missed the green umbrellas!

On our very last day of the trip, we had a small group guided tour of the Pantheon; it was so small, in fact, that it was just us with one other person, Joan, a woman from Boston. This happened to be on the day of the US election, so I asked Joan how she was doing. Ludgio, our guide, listened to our exchange and then said I understand this is a stressful election, but I don’t know why. What is it all about? Joan explained very briefly, and then Ludgio said something that was both astonishing and also kind of refreshing: I have heard the name Donald Trump, but I don’t know anything about him. Talk about ignorance being bliss. IMAGINE. Imagine how wonderful it would be to go through life like that, having never heard that grating voice, having never been exposed to such views! Sure, I’ve heard of the guy, but…

Granted, Ludgio is an Albanian ex-pat living in Italy, who lost all his life savings opening up an art gallery that closed during the pandemic, so it’s not like he was living a life of ease. I’m sure Albania has had its share of political unrest, but I am – maybe blissfully? – ignorant on the topic, as well as on the politics of Italy. Our hotel in Rome was right beside the Italian Parliament building, and every afternoon reporters would be typing away on their laptops, accessing the hotel Wi-Fi. I eavesdropped on their conversations but my Italian is pretty rudimentary, and so I remain ignorant.

Ludgio said something incredibly inspiring, though. He told me that he wakes up every day and has his espresso while looking up the tours he was scheduled to work; he worked to pay his bills and then he came home to paint, have a nice meal, and maybe drink a beer with friends. Anywhere you go, you can live a good life, he said, Just try to live a happy life. I feel like Ludgio had seen some things, and here he was, living his best life, an artist who was making a living talking about art history, while selling paintings on the side.

Ludgio wasn’t the only Albanian we met. In Venice we ate at an Albanian family-owned place, and they were really doing an incredible job for Albanian tourism, if such a thing exists. The only exposure I have had to Albania involves the Alice Munro short story The Albanian Virgin, in which a young Canadian girl sneaks off her cruise ship to take a horseback guided tour, and ends up getting shot and kidnapped by a mountain tribe. She develops Stockholm Syndrome, after which she falls in love and runs away with a Franciscan priest. Based on that story, I’d never considered it as a travel destination. These fellows were convincing me otherwise, talking about the beaches, mountains, and pure beauty of the country. They insisted on treating us to shots of grappa after our meal, and so we left with very warm feelings about the Albanian community. Maybe I will visit Albania! If I do, hopefully I won’t end up in a hostage situation.

Speaking of Canadian literature, after our tour of the Pantheon my husband and I climbed the steps of the monument to Vittorio Emmanuel II, which gave panoramic views of Rome. A woman asked if I would photograph her, and she gave me exact instructions on how to do that, which I genuinely appreciated. I found out she was from Poland. Are you from America? she asked in a very strident voice, to which I responded quickly in the negative. Oh! Canada! My favourite author is from Canada! Have you heard of Margaret Atwood? WELL. I could hardly believe that I would find a fellow Margaret Atwood fan in Rome, of all places, from Poland, of all places. We had a great conversation about The Edible Woman before we went our separate ways.

I did a lot of reading while on trains and planes, in between all my people watching, and so I have many books to tell you about, and I will, a little later. I did want to mention that I had a DNF this week, which I had downloaded to my Kobo only because it was immediately available and I was running out of reading material before my flight home. It was The Au Pair Affair by Tessa Bailey, and listen. I know a lot of you out there love the spicy open-door romance, but to me this was just a really long modern Harlequin-style soft-core porn. Which is fine! I’m not judging. Whatever floods the basement! But I just don’t personally like reading about throbbing cocks and Cardi B-style WAPs. In the same way that I find action movies boring, I find spicy sexy books to be whatever is the opposite of erotic. I never think that I’m a prude, but then I read something like this and I think…I guess I am? The funny thing is that when I was searching for something to read, I saw the author’s name and, like Ludgio with Trump, thought Tessa Bailey, I know that name, but…

Friends, I think I’m finally over my jet lag! I had an absolutely epic, ten hours of uninterrupted sleep on Saturday night and my eyebags went from steamer trunks to pocketbooks. Today is Remembrance Day, which means that it is also the end of Tiny Secret Festive Season, and although I haven’t talked about it, you can bet that I have been celebrating.

I have also been celebrating being reunited with Rex, who has also just gotten over his exhaustion from his vacation. It’s hard work, playing all day every day for three weeks, let me tell you. Especially when there are Halloween parties to attend:

So it’s back to regular programming for us: cooking, writing, and walking down the Golden Mile. I hope you had a great weekend, friends. xo

Five (times two) For Friday: The Arrivederci Italia Edition

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WELL HELLO THERE! Where have I been? I spent just shy of three weeks in Italy; it was a dream vacation and I will remember it forever. Of course, I am in the what are words and how do we use them phase of jet lag, and so behold, I give you a photo-heavy overview of the ten places we visited.

  • Roma! We started and ended our vacation in Rome, which is my favourite city that I have ever been to. I was there on a school trip in Grade 11 and what I remember most is that I couldn’t walk five steps without being blown away by something incredible, and this was exactly my experience now, all these years later. We spent a total of six nights there, and we could have spent sixty and would still not have experienced everything. All of our touring was on foot along the cobblestone streets, dodging the tiny cars for whom things like “lanes” and “pedestrian areas” are fluid and flexible concepts.
  • Vatican City. On my husband’s birthday we went to the Vatican and had a small group tour of the museum and St Peter’s Basilica; of the six people in our group, three were celebrating birthdays. We were led by a very handsome and charming guide named Massimo, who appeared to be some kind of celebrity in the tour guide world. Everywhere we went we heard calls of Ey, Massimo!, to which he’d respond with a lift of his hand and a Ciao. Ciao! Allora., like he was on the red carpet, faced with the paparazzi, and we were his entourage, following behind, rarely getting our tickets checked at the security points. He spoke of himself in the third person. Why do you not let Massimo show you? he’d say, demi-sexually, with his hand on our shoulder if one of our group was lagging or distracted by something. I was the only non-Catholic in our group, which made me the subject of many, many jokes; Massimo gestured widely to the vast number of confessionals in the Basilica. You can surely find an English speaking priest, he said, looking at his watch, And you have until 7pm, that is enough time, no? It was 11am at the time, and I didn’t think eight hours would be quite enough to confess everything, and so I remain non-Catholic.
  • Civita de Bagnoregio. Rome must have been sad that we were leaving, as the beautiful weather TURNED on our departure. We had hired a driver to take us to Montepulciano with a stop at Civita de Bagnoregio, as driving in Italy – especially Rome – is pure madness. Madness, I say! Our driver, Roberto, was achieving speeds near 150 km/hour in the driving rain and fog, on winding roads, and I wondered if this would be the end, beautiful friend. Happily it wasn’t, but the weather did not let up for Civita, a tiny crumbling village on top of a mountain. On the upside, it wasn’t crowded.
  • Montepulciano. After that, Roberto zoomed us over to Montepulciano, a non-crumbling village atop a mountain in Tuscany. It is famous for its wine, which I enjoyed, and we toured a cellar that dated from 1337. We stayed in the most adorable six-room hotel, that was so full of tchotchkes, it felt like staying at someone’s nonna’s house.
  • Siena. We took the train to Siena, also in Tuscany, and enjoyed the food and wine there. Notably we explored the Duomo and climbed the Panorama del Facciatorre and Porto del Cielo, which gave a marvelous view of the city and the basilica. They were accessed by tiny, narrow, spiral staircases, so this is not for the claustrophobic. Fortunately I wasn’t, although the Panorama was a bit nerve wracking, being only a few feet wide with very low railings, towering above the city. We had the added pleasure of seeing longtime friends whom we hadn’t seen in twenty years. We moved on up in the world by staying in a ten-room hotel, which was gorgeous. In the incredible main piazza, I discovered a love of pigeons, channeling my inner Bert, or maybe even my inner Bobby Simone.
  • Firenze! We took the train to Florence, where we were to spend five nights. That’s a lot of nights in Florence, but we had several day trips, via train, planned. The train system is so great in Italy! While in Florence we enjoyed the Renaissance art, and also a little bit of market shopping. Almost everywhere, you can buy David penis-related merchandise, from fridge magnets to key chains to postcards to the type of apron that makes you look like your head has been transposed onto David’s body. It’s all so cheap and weird, which makes the viewing of the actual David even more spectacular. I remembered our teacher chaperone, back on my school trip in 1992, purchasing a plastic replica of David, and I can just imagine it on his coffee table, lo these many years later. I refrained from purchasing any penis-related memorabilia, so anyone expecting one such postcard will be disappointed.
  • Lucca. Our first day trip via train was Lucca, and it was kind of a low point. I had been excitedly anticipating this medieval walled city but we visited it the day before their famous comic and gaming conference, the largest in Europe. We got off the trip with several costumed individuals, including a man who looked exactly like Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons. The medieval wall was covered in tents from various sponsors, and their main square was filled with a tent advertising Squid Games. There was even a giant inflated anime character beside the church. Still, it was fun to stroll around.
  • Cinqueterra! If Lucca was the low point, Cinqueterra was the high. Our guide, Stephano, picked us up in Florence and drove us non-insanely to Manarola, which we strolled through to catch the train to Corniglia, where we hiked through the hillside to Vernazza. We had lunch there, then took the train to Monterossa al Mare, where I was surprised to see so many people on a beach vacation. This is the Speedo capital of the world! Stephano told me, gesturing to the many men so attired. From there we took a boat back to Manarola and headed back for Florence. It was such a great day, one of the best of my entire life.
  • Pisa! Like David’s penis, there are replicas of the Leaning Tower of Pisa everywhere, and so my expectations for this sight were fairly low. Was I ever wrong! We took the train to Pisa and when we came up to the historic building I absolutely gasped. It is so incredibly beautiful. It honestly took my breath away. We climbed to the top, and it was kind of unsettling to feel the slant in the floors and in the winding spiral steps. They’d slant one way, then, as you’d make your way to the other side, they’d slant the other. Also, there is a law that if you don’t take a photo pretending to hold up the tower, they make you go home, but it’s harder than you think!
  • Venizia! Venice is such a chaotic, beautiful, wild, crazy place. It is a frequent stop for cruise ships, and we got there on a Saturday afternoon, which was maybe not the best timing. There was incredibly dense fog, and we wandered the streets, getting pleasantly lost, until our wandering brought us into masses of people crammed into streets lined with incredibly high-end shops. It felt all the world like being in the Venetian hotel in Vegas, except with poor air quality. We had to stop and fortify ourselves with several Aperol spritzes. The next day was much more fun; we got up very early and took the Vaporitta, the water bus, through the city while listening to an audio guide. I had fully expected to want a gondola ride, but when I saw the reality – bumper to bumper gondolas, people queued up as for a Disney ride – I didn’t want to anymore. The population of Venice is diminishing rapidly as it is very expensive to live there, doing day-to-day things like getting groceries is nearly impossible, and there are very strict government building codes that prevent changes to dwellings that are decaying, mildewed, and subject to frequent floods. I’m really glad we went to Venice, because it’s an incredible sight to behold, but I don’t want to go back.

And now I’m home, and trying to catch up on life! I’d love to catch up with all of you, as well. I missed you! Currently I have 304 unread posts in my reader, so it might take some time – help a girl out and tell me what I’ve missed! News did follow me and so I did not miss the US election results. While I’m always sending Care Bear Stares to my friends around the globe, I’m sending extra to my friends south of the border. I hope you can feel them. Tell me something good, friends, or tell me what’s happening in your life, tell me something fun, tell me something serious, just tell me anything. xo

Nicole’s Favourite Things: The Trick or Treat Edition

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I never really understood Anne Shirley’s feelings on October until I moved here. It is so beautiful right now, I can barely stand it. The colours are gorgeous, and every day is a little bit different. I’m becoming slightly unhinged, talking about leaves to my family every day.

I mean, I am stopping perfect strangers on the street to talk to them about fall colours, which isn’t TOTALLY out of line for me, but I am starting to become a tiny bit concerned about my sanity. Also I’m starting to worry that people are going to recognize and avoid me from here on in.

For the first time ever, I will not be celebrating Halloween in the traditional sense, and so I’m a little early this month, talking about my Favourite Things! Some of these things are tricks, some are treats, and some are both.

Gourds, Decorative and Otherwise, Motherfuckers

You guys, I grew my own pumpkins!

Cute, right? Have you ever seen a more perfect pumpkin? There’s more where that came from, in addition to my massive haul of butternut squash.

And, of course, more zucchini.

I could not resist the siren call of the motherfucking decorative gourds. It’s the season, motherfuckers!

Fruit Is Nature’s Candy

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, grape harvesting is done, and so I have thoroughly enjoyed my own backyard Concords.

There is so much incredible fresh fruit right now, and my favourites are pears and apples. A neighbourhood girl was selling plums from her own backyard trees to raise money for the Terry Fox Foundation, so of course I had to buy some.

But the apples, my god, the apples. I cannot get enough of those delicious, tree-ripened McIntosh apples. I’m eating two or three a day right now. I may turn into an apple. HOW DO YOU LIKE THEM APPLES.

These apples are delicious! As a matter of fact they are, she said.

The Other Kind of Grape

We live at the bottom of a vineyard; we own, along with my mother-in-law, two acres of it, but the rest is owned by the founder of Tantalus Vineyards. What you may not know is that those vineyards were owned by my husband’s family until my late father-in-law sold them to Tantalus twenty years ago. They still have a block named after him, and they still have the Old Vines, planted by him – and my then-teenaged husband – in 1978. The winery is, therefore, a place I like to visit, particularly when we have out-of-town guests, and so I took my parents there for a wine tasting.

I love their homegrown Riesling, but I REALLY love their Syrah. The Syrah grapes are not grown on the adjacent property; instead they come from just south of here, and sadly they, along with 95% of Okanagan grapes, were decimated by the cold snap we had here in January. Yes, you read that right: 95% of ALL wine grape crops in the Okanagan were destroyed, which means that there will be little to no 2024 vintage. People, if you love Okanagan wines, get them now while you can.

I was disheartened to hear that of 110 Syrah grape plants, from which this wine is made, 108 are gone. You can bet I’m going to savour these wines that my dad bought for me, because it will be many years before they are available again.

Just An Ordinary Girl In An Ordinary World

On a less-apocalyptic note, let’s talk about Ordinary products. I have been using this line for a few years, ever since my wrinkle-less friend Denise (HI DENISE) told me about them. I have loved their caffeine undereye serum, but I branched out and bought the multi-peptide one, and I really think it’s made a difference.

I also bought Matrixyl for my forehead wrinkles, and while I don’t think these are miraculous, dermatologist office substitutes, I think they work pretty well. Things don’t seem to be getting worse, and sometimes the status quo is the best we can hope for.

Ghosting the Blessed Life

Whenever someone visits my house for the first time, there is a guarantee that they will comment on the volume of bananas on my countertop. I don’t blame them; as a family we go through a vast amount. I personally go through fourteen bananas a week, entirely in smoothie form.

My breakfast smoothie is made up of cashew milk, nut butter, a frozen banana, and a ton of spinach. I always feel great after consuming it; it’s a nutrition bomb full of vitamins, fibre, calcium, and iron.

The one thing it’s not super high in is protein. I mean, yes, there is protein involved, but I don’t feel it’s enough to adequately fuel my very active, plant-based lifestyle. This means that every lunch I make myself a smoothie with protein powder, cashew milk, and yet another frozen banana. It feels like a milkshakey treat, and I look forward to it. I used to buy the Protein Works vegan line, but it was a) expensive, and b) only available in the US or UK, and so I was always paying exchange rates and shipping. I decided to branch out and I’m so glad I did.

Ghost vegan protein powder tastes exactly like a delicious chocolate milkshake, not too sweet or cloying, and it has a perfect, non-gritty texture.

I’ve tried a few of the Blessed flavours, to much disappointment. The chocolate, usually a safe flavour for me, is frankly disgusting, and the strawberry isn’t much better. The chocolate coconut is okay, but this! This vanilla chai, which sounds like a risky choice, is really, really good. Once in a while I’ll even use it instead of nut butter in my spinach smoothie and it works great.

Outfit of the Month

It’s my Fall Uniform!

Suzanne (HI SUZANNE) recently was talking about buying multiples of the same clothing item, which is a very relatable topic. I have bought three pair of the Infinite Fit Silver jeans that I spoke about last month – they are stretchy and comfortable and, amazingly, don’t lose their shape. They fit like a more-structured yoga pant. These ones are the straight cut, which I like to wear cuffed with booties. The sweater is just a light old one from the Gap, and the tank top underneath is from Lululemon, both about six years old. I wear some combination of jeans, boots, and a black – or, if I’m feeling saucy, grey – sweater, often with a tank underneath, basically every day. Why mess with the uniform?

As previously mentioned, I won’t be celebrating Halloween in the traditional sense, and that is because I’m going on a big adventure! To that end, I will be taking a blog break. I can’t wait to tell you all about it, sometime in November, but until then, take care of yourselves, friends. Treat yourselves tenderly, and maybe treat yourself to a few treats as well. Or tricks! I don’t judge. xo

In It Together

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I was taking a Peloton class the other day, and I noticed something. I am a person who likes to send out “high fives” to everyone surrounding me on the leaderboard, particularly people who have the same group hashtags as I do. My people! I will think, happily, if I see someone from the #yestoyoucrew or #PelotonCanada. I was cheerfully moving my way up when I saw the hashtag #therapyfortherapists.

It reminded me of the time I saw #therapistsofpeloton and all I could think of was this:

What I’m saying is that I’m glad the rapists are getting therapy through exercise.

I love Peloton for many reasons, and one of them is that I love the idea that there are other people out there, doing the same exact workout as me at the same exact time. It gives me that wonderful feeling of we are all in this life together, doing the same things, but differently that I absolutely love. Here we all are, going about our lives, separately, but somehow interconnected.

When I was in university, I took a couple of classes from a professor who had the worst body odour you can imagine. This wasn’t simply a matter of oops, forgot my deodorant before I hit the gym. This was on another level altogether. It had to have been a medical issue; it was a Seinfeld-level entity. You didn’t dare sit in the first three rows in his classroom, or, if you did, you’d never make that mistake again. Even in the very back, at best you’d leave the classroom surreptitiously sniffing your clothes to ensure that the smell didn’t cling, at worst, you’d finish class with a nauseous headache.

It occurred to me one day, as I took notes on microeconomic systems, that this professor was married. I looked with wonder at the fluorescent overhead light glinting on his wedding ring, and I marvelled at the idea. There is a lid for every pot, I thought with awe. It hit me, maybe for the first time ever, that day back in 1995, that we all have sides of us that other people don’t see. I couldn’t stop thinking about it, as I scribbled down the required equations. Maybe his wife had no sense of smell, I thought, or maybe she liked his smell, maybe she felt it was a sexy, manly musk. Maybe she just loved him so much that his smell didn’t matter, and this realization – that maybe this professor had a whole different personality and set of interests that no one else knew about – made me feel a bit dizzy. Or maybe it was the body odour, wafting its way to my desk.

It started a bit of a fascination for me; not with that professor in particular, but with people in general. Professors for sure were interesting to think about. If you have ever been in an economics department, you will know what I mean. How interesting it is to think that at some point, these men – they were almost exclusively men back then, in the 90s – fell in love and, presumably, proposed to the women that they were married to. At some point, that professor who was dully talking about the utility curve had passionately declared his love and, most likely, had sexual relations. THEY INTERCOURSED. Most likely, anyway.

Later, when I was working in a very male-dominated department, the same thing would occur to me, not the intercoursing, but the romantic relations. I would be sitting in a meeting or working on a pricing model or listening to someone talk about synergies or optionality or circling back, and suddenly the idea that the speaker in question had presumably gone to a jeweler and chosen an engagement ring and given it to a woman, a woman who I had met at the office holiday party, with words of love and romance, popped into my head. Once, when speaking about a case of mergers and acquisitions, a former boss used the term opening the kimono. I’m sure that phrase is now out of use, but at the time I thought what if he HAD a kimono, an actual kimono, and he opened it for his wife.

The point of all this is that people are complicated, and interesting, and can be more than one thing at the same time. Every single person is so much more than they present to the world, which is something I try to remember every day. That person is beloved to somebody, I’ll think when I have a less-than-rosy interaction, sometimes with my teeth gritted.

A few months ago I was driving home and was followed very closely by a very large truck. I was driving with the flow of traffic, just barely over the speed limit, and I was being tailgated in an alarming way. All I could see in my rearview mirror was this giant truck grill. I stopped at a red light and just as it turned green, the driver in question wildly passed me on the right, which wasn’t a lane at all but a shoulder, cut me off, and then slammed on the brakes. He then proceeded to drive at least thirty kilometres below the speed limit.

What you have to understand is my reaction. His slow driving did not even register to me until I realized that there was no one in front of him to cause it. It took me a few minutes of this to realize that he was “getting me back.” Buddy. You’ve got the wrong girl. I wasn’t bothered at all by this, in fact, I was amused. I didn’t mind in the least. What, am I going to be two minutes late to get home? Am I going to be late to unload these groceries? I calmly, smilingly continued to follow him at this slow speed, listening to my Forever 35 podcast, when he tired of this ruse, and screeched his tires as he sped through the upcoming traffic circle. I imagined him going home, and complaining to someone about the middle aged bitch who slowed him down. I hope he had someone to complain to.

Weekly Reading

It was re-read week at the Boyhouse! I re-visited some old favourites. I’d like to please remind my friends that, when it comes to Alice Munro, I am only interested in discussing her craft and writing. Thank you for supporting my mental and emotional health.

Diary of a Provincial Lady. When I mentioned this book last week, I had an absolute craving to re-read it. This is one of my all-time favourites and no, nothing happens. I have read it so much that it is literally falling apart, and I have to carefully keep the pages in order. It is just so witty and clever. It contains one of my favourite paragraphs ever written: “Move about after dinner, and meet acquaintance whose name I have forgotten, but connect with literature. I ask if he has published anything lately. He says that his work is not, and never can be, for publication. Thought passes through my mind to the effect that this attitude might with advantage be adopted by many others.” HA. Also, I love this: “Overhear one lady in stalls ask another: Why don’t you write a play, dear? Well, says the friend, it’s so difficult, what with one thing and another, to find time. Am staggered. (Query: Could I write a play myself? Could we all write plays, if only we had the time?)”

Amy and Isabelle. No one can write like Elizabeth Strout; her prose is so beautiful and moving and heartbreaking. This book was a reread for me. I first read it in April 2020; my husband gave it to me for my birthday, when all the libraries were closed, and because of that, I was reminded of that time, rereading. It’s a bleak story about a mother and daughter in a small town in Maine – it IS Elizabeth Strout, after all – and the secrets they keep from each other. I am always fascinated by people’s lives, and the things we don’t know about the people we think we know, and this book is all about that. What I didn’t know until I read it this time is that this is Strout’s debut, which she wrote at age 42! I love knowing that. And what a debut! It’s a really incredible, character-driven book. It’s gritty. It’s grim. It’s beautiful. I love it.

Too Much Happiness. This book is a master class in spare, moving writing, and it is one of the few – maybe it’s the only? – Alice Munro collections that contains a novella. The novella is the title story, about famed Russian mathematician Sophia Kovalevskaya. More than that, this collection contains a really wide variety of really incredible stories. Munro is unmatched in creating stories of characters that I think about often.

I hope you all had a wonderful weekend. In an unbelievable twist, I actually finished my Christmas shopping, which is a new record by far, and one which I don’t really want to repeat. There’s a reason for that, but I will tell you all about it later. For now, I hope you all have a beautiful October week. xo

Three For Thursday: Dinner, Dog, Domestic Duties

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Cozy Dinner Season Begins

Gardening season is wrapping up for the year, but the zucchinis and tomatoes are still going strong. You would think we would all be tired of those things, but I made a Buddha bowl last weekend and was astonished when my son said that the zucchini was a great addition.

I have filled my freezer both with bags of grated zucchini and roasted tomatoes. The garden has produced more tomatoes than anyone could possibly consume, and that is coming from someone who can consume a lot of tomatoes. I don’t want to can them, and so I roast them with olive oil and freeze them; pureed with pasta water and a little bit of goat or cashew cheese makes for a really incredible sauce. Roasted zucchini goes great with it!

I still have some cilantro, but I feel like its days are numbered. I love it sprinkled on top of stir-fry. Note that there is zucchini in there.

My second planting of kale, spinach, and lettuce has been prolific, but I think this might be the last big homegrown salad of the year. It will be strange to buy greens again.

For the record, there was no zucchini in that salad.

The Grocery Shopping Never Ends, Neither Does The Laundry

The garden has definitely had a huge impact on the amount of produce I need to buy every week, but even so, I am constantly astounded by the sheer volume of groceries I buy for our household of now-three.

I went to Costco on Tuesday, which wasn’t the best idea given I was having the kind of day that was just filled with constant tiny annoyances. Typically I launder all the sheets on Tuesdays, and I decided to throw in my duvet cover and pillow shams as well, which resulted in said duvet cover and my fitted sheet cannibalizing all the other linens. While they were, unbeknownst to me, becoming a tangled, soggy mess in the dryer, I blithely thought to launder the pillows as well, which kept unbalancing the washer load. When the washer was stuck in spin mode at the four-minute mark for over twenty minutes, I clued in that something was wrong. By the time I resolved these very minor, but annoying laundry crises, I was not in the best mental space to tackle Costco, but I did it anyway.

My thinking was that Tuesday was far enough ahead of the Thanksgiving weekend, and that it wouldn’t be too crazy, but I was wrong. I was wrong. It turns out every elderly, slow-moving, sample-eating, spatially-unaware person in the surrounding area ALSO thought Tuesday would be far enough ahead of Thanksgiving to be a good time to go to Costco.

Now, listen. One day, hopefully, I will be one of those elderly, slow-moving people in Costco, stocking up to host the whole family for a holiday meal. Hopefully we all will be! But as god is my witness, I will never stand in the middle of the aisle eating a dixie cup filled with a sample of ravioli or frozen mixed vegetables, I will never take two carts, trainlike, and block off the entire frozen fruit section, and I will never angle my cart sideways in the produce section and then leave said cart to check on my husband in baked goods, while clusters of people become stuck in the giant refrigerator, experiencing the Costco equivalent of road rage when they are just trying to get a goddamn bag of broccoli, Carol.

I was trying to be zen about it. I mean, it’s not like an extra ten minutes was going to kill me. All the same, I had to go into the Christmas section to calm myself down. I was incredibly soothed by the displays, and I considered buying myself a giant Snoopy-themed holiday gift basket, but decided that $39 was too much to spend on something filled with things I have no use for, like hot chocolate bombs and marshmallow cookies. Still, the mug was cute.

Since the closure of Hallmark stores several years ago, I have not been able to find really nice gift wrap for birthdays and such. I always wished that Costco would make a non-holiday version of their high-quality gift wrap, and people! They have! If I hadn’t been so annoyed by my fellow aged shoppers, I would never have soothed myself in the Christmas section, and I would have never found a three-pack of beautiful, double-sided paper. The universe works in strange ways.

Two Year Rexaversary

Two years ago today, we were given the most wonderful gift: Rex. I am grateful every day we were chosen to be his family.

Rex is the epitome of joy, and I feel like we could all take lessons from him. When I open his crate in the morning, he reacts with such excitement and happiness to see me, and that sets the tone for the day. Every single thing is exciting to him: walking, gardening, getting a treat, finding a stick, and sitting with me while I write, fold the laundry, or make dinner. He loves to go for car rides; it doesn’t matter where, as long as he’s with me. He is just pure cheer and joy, and we love that giant fuzzy goofball.

How lucky we are. How grateful I am. Happy Thanksgiving, friends. xo