Don’t You Get Me Wrong

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I was just finishing preparing dinner the other night when I heard a very familiar guitar riff. I left what I was doing to run to the living room, which sounds dramatic, but it’s literally five steps away.

Rewinding twenty-seven years or so, I was modestly famous among my friends in grad school for my uncanny ability to identify a song – title and artist – by hearing only the first half-second of the opening chord. We Are Family! Sister Sledge! I would yell at Name That Tune Night in the grad lounge. I Am Woman! Helen Reddy! My abilities meant our team consistently came in first, although I don’t think I would be able to do that now, with any kind of modern music. And by “modern,” I mean music that came out this millennium. Maybe I’d be able to identify some Pitbull or Eminem, but even so, I would have to hear at least thirty seconds of a song before accurately naming it.

But essentially any song from the last century I’m good at both identifying and also singing all the lyrics to, and when I heard that familiar guitar whine I was excited because I knew Jesus Christ Superstar was on TV. Why now? I have no idea. I always think of it as an Easter show, but here we are, in September, learning about the Crucifixion.

The very best part of Jesus Christ Superstar is the beginning, when all those hippies are getting ready for the play. I could watch the overture over and over. I love seeing them create – and strike – the set, and getting into their characters. I also love Herod’s Song – who doesn’t? prove to me that you’re divine, change my water into wine – but honestly, the whole musical is kind of bland to me. Don’t you get me wrong but other than three or four songs, I think the music is boring and the whole thing is kind of a downer. You might be saying to yourself well, consider the subject matter, but the American war of independence, political corruption in Argentina, and a creepy disfigured man living underneath an opera house who is obsessed with a young ingenue singing his arias are not exactly uplifting either, and yet I love every moment of Hamilton, Evita, and The Phantom of the Opera.

I love musicals generally so I was very excited to be invited to watch Mamma Mia! with the girls at my friend Carolyn’s home theatre (HI CAROLYN). When I say “home theatre” I mean she actually has a literal theatre in her home. It’s one of the most incredible things I have ever seen inside someone’s house. Anyway, given my deep love for disco generally and ABBA specifically, it was surprising that I hadn’t ever seen this before, but I hadn’t, and I found it absolutely delightful. PIERCE BROSNAN AND COLIN FIRTH. Rawr. That girl seems too young to get married, I thought, like the aged woman that I am, but what a fun movie. Plus, did I mention Pierce Brosnan and Colin Firth.

It occurs to me that there are many, many pop culture mainstays that I have never observed myself, although I am well aware of their contribution to our society. For example, I have never seen a single episode of Cheers, the movie Groundhog Day, or Star Trek in any iteration. I have never watched Gilmore Girls, Dawson’s Creek, or The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, although I can to this day rap every single word to Parents Just Don’t Understand. Okay, here’s the situation, my parents went away on a week’s vacation…

Everyone could save time by just assuming that the answer is “no” when wondering if I have seen any film or television adaptation of any book, ever, other than Little Women or a Jane Austen. I reread Bridget Jones’ Diary so many times that I have parts memorized, although now it seems very dated and quite toxic. I have never seen the movie, though, because I loved the book so much at the time that I couldn’t bear to see anything changed, even if Colin Firth WAS in it. That’s right, Mr Darcy himself couldn’t change my mind.

Weekly Reading

I have SO much to talk about this week, in terms of reading. Here we go!

The Burnout. This is a very cute, light read about a woman named Sasha who is suffering burnout at work; after a small breakdown she heads for the beach that she frequented as a child to stay at the once-fancy hotel. The hotel has gone through some rough times, and honestly the hotel staff and description of the issues are hilarious. She meets up with a man who is similarly burned out AND also frequented this same beach as a child. You can probably guess what happens! Let’s not overthink this. It’s just fun. 

Every Last One. This is the type of book I like thinking about more than I liked reading, if that makes sense. It follows a family in a small town in which there are many interconnected characters – kids’ friends’ parents are the parents’ friends – and a massive tragedy strikes. I thought I knew how things were going to go in this book and so I was very surprised when, after kind of a sleepy first half, there was a massively dramatic event halfway through. I think if you’ve ever parented teens you will recognize the particular challenges involved here, even without the tragedy. But the book begs the question: if you build your entire life around your kids, what happens when they aren’t around? I found myself thinking about this book a lot, but as I said, I didn’t love it. The writing style hops back and forth in time, which is interesting but can be a bit confusing. It’s a little slow and sleepy, even with the Big Dramatic Event.

Long Island. This is the sequel to Brooklyn, which I recently read, and despite the title, it mainly takes place in Ireland in 1976. After our protagonist Eilis discovers that not only has her husband slept with another woman, that woman is pregnant. The pregnant woman’s husband is going to just…deliver the baby to Eilis and her husband to raise, as he will not raise a child who is not his. What? Well, Eilis does not want anything to do with this baby, but her in-laws – who live next door, I feel seen – do. This strange storyline is the reason Eilis decides to go visit her mother in Ireland, who is turning 80, where she reconnects with an old flame. My friend Hailey (HI HAILEY) described this as a book where the characters have big emotions and face big issues, but the author only skims the surface, and I think that’s a perfect description. But, as with Brooklyn, I was left wanting more, wanting to know what happens next. And I didn’t get that. Maybe it’s the setup for another sequel.

We are now officially in fall! Happy first week of fall, friends! xo

Nicole’s Favourite Things: The Cheap Trick Edition

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It’s sunset season!

I know what you’re going to say: sunsets occur on the daily. This is true – sunrise, sunset – but since I retire so early I don’t generally see sunsets from May to August. Sunrises, I see those every day. But sunsets? No.

I really do believe that The Best Things In Life Are Free, like sunsets, but also, I believe that You Get What You Pay For. This is a fun dichotomy, which involves me feeling very Mary Oliver about my surroundings, and also being a complete snob about yoga wear.

One thing I genuinely, desperately miss is the Sears catalogue, particularly around the holidays. Remember the Wish Book? The first few pages would be dedicated to gifts under a certain dollar amount and I absolutely loved looking at those pages. Did anyone I know need a pair of Maple Leaf themed mittens or a cubic zirconia brooch in the shape of a snowman? Probably not, but I loved looking at them. I was thinking of that recently, realizing that so many of my Favourite Things tend to be on the pricier side. But there are many things I love that are not so expensive, and so I decided that this month, every Favourite Thing would be under ten dollars. Cheap, cheerful, and immensely helpful to my life, all of these things give a lot of bang for the buck.

Nicole’s Favourite Things: The Cheap Trick Edition

Fly Away, Bye Bye

It’s fruit fly season! I do not remember ever having fruit flies in Calgary – perhaps the nights were just too cold for them? I have no idea – so wow, was I in for a shock last fall when my fruit-full kitchen was descended upon. Of course I made all those homemade traps with coffee filters and red wine and jars covered with perforated cling wrap, and they all worked fine, but I kind of hated the look of them. I found these cute little traps that I fill up with apple cider vinegar and a drop of dish soap, and voila. It’s a watery graveyard filled with those tiny little bastards.

Bzzzzz

Did you love Lip Smackers back in the 80s? I sure did, and I remember clearly graduating from those fruit-flavoured lip balms to Kissing Potion, a truly grotesque lip gloss that came in a little bottle with a roller ball, like those old-school roll-on deodorants. Younger readers, I’m sure you have no idea what I’m talking about, but girls of a certain age, you know what I mean.

My point is that I have had a lifelong love of flavoured, tinted lip balms and glosses, and I expect this love affair to continue until I become human compost at the base of a tree. I have graduated from Lip Smackers and Kissing Potion to Burts’ Bees. I love their entire line of balms, tinted balms, shimmers, and glosses. Typically if I’m going out I wear lipstick, but tinted balms, shimmers, and glosses are good for when I’m just hanging around the house or walking the dog. Life is too short to go without lip colour, I say.

I’ll tell you what I don’t love: plain lip balm. Variety is the spice of life and I like to be spicy. I cannot be confined to plain. I’m not going to walk into an ice cream shop with 100 flavours and order vanilla, you know?

Colour Me Happy

Speaking of colour, I spent two decades of my life paying for professional hair colour, and when the pandemic hit and I started doing it myself, I knew there was no going back. To say I regret the time and money spent on professional hair colour would be a vast understatement. Well. There is no going back, only going forward, and as god is my witness I shall never pay exorbitant prices for hair colour again, not when I can buy a box of Garnier for under ten dollars and be done and on my way in 30 minutes.

I feel so strongly about this that I actually broke up with a hair stylist who gave me the best haircuts of my life, because she just would not stop hassling me about colouring my own hair, even after I asked her not to. I did have a worrisome moment recently though; I had applied my colour and was practicing my DuoLingo while it set, and then when I went to rinse I noticed that I had dripped colour on my beautiful white bathroom cabinet. It had been soaking in for thirty minutes and was not budging. I felt actually sick.

I turned to the internet for advice, and discovered, as in everything else in life, that I was not alone. The internet suggested a Mr Clean Magic Eraser with hydrogen peroxide or rubbing alcohol; I had both items in the house, and lo, it worked. It worked! It didn’t take the finish off the cabinet, but just…magically erased the hair colour. TRULY MAGIC. ERASER.

It’s Good But Not That Good, If You Know What I Mean

Since I seem to be revisiting my youth, remember back in the 90s when Herbal Essences first came out, and the entire marketing campaign centred around a woman using the shampoo and having an orgasm in the shower because it smelled so good? Oh, to have been a (fruit) fly on the wall at that executive meeting.

I don’t use that shampoo, but I do use Herbal Essences Touchable Hold hairspray (touchable hold, is this also a sexual euphemism? I need to get IN TOUCH with the marketing team.) Anyway, it is honestly the best hairspray I have ever tried; it doesn’t make my hair sticky or crunchy. IT MAKES IT TOUCHABLE.

This is not to say that hair that is crunchy or sticky is not touchable. I mean, anything is touchable. WE CAN TOUCH THINGS. I really need to talk to the Herbal Essences people. Anyway, the long and the short (heh) of it is that this is really good, long lasting (double heh) hairspray and it’s about six dollars a bottle. I’ve never had an orgasm using it, but it does smell pretty good.

Happy Snoopy Dance

Circling back to the Sears catalogue, the one thing I wanted and never got was a Snoopy Sno Cone Machine. Friends who did receive this item have since told me it was an absolute disappointment of a fake appliance that broke immediately; this does not stop me from coveting it, somehow. I suppose it’s because Snoopy is my spirit animal; I feel like my whole personality can be summed up by that beagle.

So it’s no wonder that I immediately snapped up this little cutie:

I know most people in the modern age now keep grocery lists on shared apps or digital notes or what have you, but I am old-fashioned, and I like a piece of paper with a pen. I don’t want just any piece of paper, though. I want a cute piece of paper. This little notepad is absolutely perfect, and I smile every time I note down yet another thing to buy at the grocery store, why do we eat so much food.

Outfit of the Month

In keeping with the theme of the month, I bought that tee on Maui in 2016 for FIVE AMERICAN DOLLARS. The rest of the outfit was definitely over my ten dollar limit, unless I think of each piece in terms of cost per wear, in which case I’m in the clear. The grey yoga tank and the shoes I bought in 2017, and I have worn them many, many times. The jeans, as you know from my ongoing saga, are new, but let me tell you a little about them. They are Silver brand, and are called “Infinity Fit.” It’s a strange thing because they are JEANS, but they come in sizes S, M, L, etc., rather than regular numbered sizes. I was pretty skeptical but they were on a major clearout from – wait for it – Mark’s, as in Work Wearhouse, and so I thought I’d take a chance. PEOPLE. It is like wearing slightly stiffer yoga pants. Yes, they are jeans, with a button and a zipper, but they are so incredibly stretchy. And yet they keep their shape all day long! Needless to say I ordered more than one pair in different washes and styles. It’s the dawning of a new era, the era of my stretchy jeans.

Oh, September! It’s such a beautiful month, especially here in Kelowna. It’s absolutely gorgeous, friends – cool, crisp mornings followed by warm, sunny afternoons, the leaves juuuust starting to change colour, the garden and neighbouring farm stands absolutely filled with produce. Right now I can step outside and cut a bunch of perfectly sweet, ripe Concord grapes for a little snack, and it’s the most joyfully delicious thing. I hope wherever you are, September is just as sweet. xo

Series-us

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Just like everyone else in the reading world, I have strong preferences when it comes to certain genres and subjects. I gravitate towards those genres naturally, although I really do try to branch out every now and then to broaden my mind and my horizons.

Recently Suzanne (HI SUZANNE) wrote about twenty ideas for lists of twenty, and I thought I’d steal one of the lists for a blog post. Who doesn’t love a list? Then I came across number 5: twenty of my favourite book series. I realized then that not only could I not list twenty favourite book series, I’m not sure if I’ve even READ twenty book series in my entire life.

This, I think, goes back to genre. Mysteries, fantasy, and sci-fi all seem to lend themselves nicely to becoming series, but the books I tend to read do not. I could only think of two series that I have read as an adult: the Lucy Barton series, and the Rosie series.

Both of those I really loved, but for very different reasons. Lucy Barton is just such a stark, beautifully written series and I became invested in her character immediately. I just found out that Elizabeth Strout has published a Lucy Barton/ Olive Ketteridge mashup and I am torn between ordering it immediately or putting it on my Christmas list. If my husband is reading this right now, he’s probably taking notes.

I loved the Rosie series for being funny and warm-hearted, and I will note that this is a rare case of the books getting better as the series progresses. It’s also a rare case that I love not one but three books with a male author.

Now, as I have said many times, I am not a person that enjoys mysteries. I have tried, lord, how I have tried. I have become at peace with the idea that mysteries are just not for me. It may surprise you to know, then, that this has not always been the case! When I was a child, I was completely obsessed with The Bobbsey Twins Mysteries.

My mother tried to get me interested in Nancy Drew, but I would not have it. I would not read about that titian-haired heroine. Give me Bobbsey Twins or give me death.

These two books in particular were very formative back in 1982. When my younger brother was born that year, I read the Adventure in the Country and spent the entire summer pretending our backyard was a farm. I would go outside in the morning and pretend to feed chickens, milk cows, ride horses, and – in a strange twist, given my extreme distaste for them now – I gathered a pile of small white rocks together which, in my extremely active imagination, were a nest of mice.

The Tagalong Giraffe was also formative in that it instilled in me a lifelong desire to visit Africa and see giraffes in the wild. My husband is in the midst of planning such a trip, to take place in a couple of years, so stay tuned for that. I hope to have my very own tagalong giraffe adventure, minus the poachers, which is a key plot point in this book.

Of course I loved the Little House on the Prairie books which are somewhat horrifying to read now, given everything we now know about the idea of manifest destiny, the treatment of indigenous people, and how the terrible droughts were actually caused by misinformed farming practices that uprooted all the native grasses. I mean, I was six when I started reading these, so I really wasn’t all that discerning with regards to the politics and human rights and environmental atrocities of the settlement of America. I just loved the idea of a corncob doll, a single cake and a tin cup in my Christmas stocking, and, weirdest of all, having a pig’s bladder as a balloon.

I have a hot take regarding the Anne of Green Gables series: with the exception of Anne’s House of Dreams, which is dramatic and also GRIM, none of the subsequent books can hold a candle to the first one. This is in direct opposition to my beloved Emily Starr books, in which the first is not great, Bob, and then the last two are fantastic. I think it compares to the Rosie books, in that the third is probably the best.

Little Men and Jo’s Boys were written after Little Women and Good Wives – the latter of which is now merely considered “part two” to Little Women – and they definitely did not appeal to me much. Little Women is one of my all-time favourite books; probably I disliked the other two because they focused on boys, and who wants to read about them? Certainly not me. I didn’t then and I don’t now, honestly.

When I was in Grade Five, the Sweet Valley High books were all the rage. I could not get enough of Elizabeth and Jessica; a huge source of angst for me was that these books were not readily available at the library. I would scan the paperback rack weekly, but rarely were they there. Instead, I ended up reading the Cheerleader series, which was inferior in my ten-year-old opinion. I was absolutely thrilled to get this box set one Christmas. I mean, look at that cover art!

The books that I did not ask for at Christmas, because they were forbidden, were the VC Andrews series. Girls of a certain age, you know what I’m talking about. Flowers in the Attic! What could be a less appropriate book for eleven and twelve year old girls? I’m sure that if we dug deep we could find one, but it would be hard. If, for some reason, you never read Flowers in the Attic, let me give you the plot synopsis: a woman is trying to get back into her parents’ good graces after a marriage which they disapproved of. She was written out of the will, but is trying to get her inheritance, and so she hides from her rich father her four children from that star-crossed marriage. How does she hide them? She enlists the help of her mother, the children’s grandmother, to hide them in the grandparents attic, where they are starved and neglected and, in the case of the older two children, subject to a sexual awakening in which they have actual intercourse. With each other. So, incest. If that’s not disturbing enough, the grandmother blames the girl for tempting her brother (ew) and so pours tar on her head (what), and then attempts to poison all of them by putting arsenic in powdered doughnuts. One of the younger children dies from eating the doughnuts, and somehow the other three escape, but the details are as blurry as the vision of the child eating the arsenic treats. Clear in my mind, though, is that the older girl goes back later and pours hot candle wax on her grandmother’s head, to get back at her for the tar incident. I mean. It’s so wild and the only thing more wild is that we were all reading these. What I wouldn’t give for an hour to chat with VC Andrews; how fascinating to be the writer that came up with this whole idea.

Weekly Reading

Speaking of reading!

The Bee Sting. My dear friend Maya (HI MAYA) had recommended this book to me, in spite of the fact that it is written by a male author. What can I say, Maya knows me well. She was sure I would love it and she has never steered me wrong yet, so I put it on hold at the library. When I went to pick up this doorstop of a book I gave Maya a long-distance side-eye. It had better be good, I thought, if I’m going to invest the time into 649 pages! But lo, Maya was right. I was hooked right from the beginning and I have to say, this is a brilliant literary novel. Absolutely brilliantly written, with four POV in distinct and unique writing styles. Also, the book goes from third person close to second person for each POV, and I find that remarkable. I almost never see second person! This book is a wild ride, following a highly dysfunctional family with an incredible backstory; there were twists and turns – some I saw coming, some I sure didn’t. The ending is stunning. Absolutely stunning. The character arcs, everything is so well done. This takes place in postcrash Ireland and hops timelines, it delves into very important subjects, and most of all, ties together in the most startling of ways.

Speaking of my bookish friends, my good friend Steph (HI STEPH) is having technical issues with her blog. If you follow her you will probably think that she hasn’t published any posts since July but my friends, this isn’t true! There is some problem that is keeping her blog from being updated on The Old Reader AND Feedly, so why don’t you do what I did and pop over there to subscribe. That way you won’t miss a thing! And if you don’t follow Steph, why don’t you? She has two brand new kittens and a newly empty nest, so why not send her a little internet love.

Suzanne had another prompt about things we did twenty years ago, but not now. That’s an easy one for me: baby care. I was completely mired in baby care twenty years ago. And I can tell you exactly what I did nineteen years ago today, and that was bringing this guy home:

It was my younger son’s birthday yesterday and we had a great time celebrating. My parents had come for the weekend so we hosted a big dinner with both sides – complete with cake!

So it was a busy weekend and it looks to be a busy week ahead! I hope you all had a lovely weekend. xo

Nature, Nurture, Nerd

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Well. That explained that.

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

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

Weekly Reading

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

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

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

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

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

Long and Winding Road

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I was walking with a friend downtown toward my favourite bookstore when I recognized a woman passing us. Isn’t it funny that when you see a person out of context, it can take a moment to place them? Usually for me it’s someone I see from the dog park or the walking path; the person and I will recognize each other, take a brief moment of silence to figure out from where, and then comment on how strange it is to see each other without our respective fuzzy companions.

But this lovely woman that I saw sauntering down the street with her son was not from the dog walking circuit; rather, she was the woman who does my body sugaring. Again, it took me a moment to realize where do I know her from but as soon as I did I smiled, waved, and said hi. She returned my salutation in a friendly way, but didn’t stop. I thought no more about it until this past week, when I had an appointment.

It was so nice to see you the other day, she said to me before explaining that if she recognizes a client on the street, she never, ever greets them unless they greet her first. Especially if they are with someone, she said, because you never know, maybe they don’t want their companion to KNOW.

I appreciated her discretion, but I also thought Know what? That they remove body hair?

A few months ago one of my sons told me that it wasn’t until junior high that he realized that girls also had hair on their legs. Until he saw a unshaven female classmate in shorts, which he observed in surprised silence, he never realized that girls had body hair. I typically think that I am a good mother and that I have been a strong female role model for my boys, and then I learn something like this.

Well. In my defense, it never once occurred to me to subject my young sons to the details of my shower and hair removal routine. Life, as we always say, is a journey, and the roads to enlightenment are long and winding.

Also long and winding are the random chin hairs I find myself plucking on the daily. One of the upsides of aging is that my chin hairs are almost exclusively white now. I say this is an upside, but honestly it is a bit of a mixed blessing. On the one hand they are much less visible than the exuberant black hairs that would come out to play while I was in my thirties, but on the other hand, even with my Daylight Magnifying Mirror they are harder to spot due to that same invisibility, which means that I only see them when they are nearly a centimeter long. I worry I’m going to start to resemble ZZ Top one day, and I won’t have noticed. On that note, recently I was surprised to discover, via my friend Stephany (HI STEPHANY) that many of my blog friends do not have or use tweezers. Without my tweezers, the aforementioned situation would be out of control, not to mention that I would look like a cross between Bert from Sesame Street, Martin Scorsese, and Magnum PI.

We are all different, of course, and some of us are a bit more hirsute than others, it seems. And as much as I’d like the liberation that would come with being one of those low-maintenance, free-to-be-you-and-me women who eschews hair removal, well, I’ll never be that woman. If ever I am in a coma, I am going to need one of you to come and do some plucking for me.

Weekly Reading

The inadvertent theme this week is learning about history through novels!

Brooklyn. This book, about a young Irish woman who immigrates to Brooklyn and then meets and falls in love with an Italian man has so many elements that I love: 1950s New York, descriptions of Irish rooming houses and tenements, an interesting female protagonist. It should be a home run for me but wow, it is a SLOW moving, quiet book. And I love slow-moving, quiet books. I don’t even need a plot to be happy. But even for me, this is a slow book. I tend to love a slow book if the writing is very beautiful, but the writing is extremely matter-of-fact and prosaic. I didn’t dislike this book; it gave me some interesting scenarios to ponder, and it’s also nice and short, so that kind of makes up for the incredibly slow pace. It’s been made into a movie and I kind of wondered…how? My friends Elise and Ariana (HI ELISE HI ARIANA) assured me that it is a beautiful movie with a simple love story, and I see that the star is an actress who I deeply admire, so maybe I’ll watch it. I am going to read the second one – Long Island – even though almost nothing happened in the first, because now I’m invested.

Kairos. This book won the International Booker Prize, and I can see why. It’s really powerful and moving, and it is written in a very unique style. That unique style, I admit, took me a few chapters to get into it. It’s a bit tricky at first – whole paragraphs that are one long sentence, no punctuation indicating dialogue, and dialogue of both characters crammed together in one sentence with no indication on how they are separated. So it’s a bit hard to follow at first but then I found the flow! It deals with a 19 year old woman entering into an affair with – wait for it – a 53 year old married man. To add to the ick factor, the married man is also a writer, and I’m going to ask you to please imagine me saying this in George Costanza’s voice: “Oh, we can’t disturb the DELICATE GEN-I-US.” Clearly the relationship is toxic but it becomes even more so as the story goes on, at one point becoming actually insane. What makes this story really interesting, though, is that it takes place in East Berlin in 1986, and continues on until German Reunification. The relationship and the political landscape are filled with parallels and there are a lot of metaphors and symbolism going on here, so if you like that – I love it! – you’ll love this book. It’s pretty fascinating; it is a time in history I remember, but vaguely, so I read this along with looking up a lot of places, maps, and timelines.

I hope you are all having a wonderful Labour Day weekend! I was living my best life on Friday when my husband and I, along with friends, went to an outdoor concert at a winery. Wine, friends, music, dancing? Sign me up! You know it’s been a good night when you wake up the next morning with a sore throat from singing and sore feet from dancing barefoot in the grass. Saturday, my son moved himself to university; I have worked hard to instill a sense of independence and competence in my children, and so while it was a bit strange not to see his room or help him move, it was also kind of nice to expend zero effort and know that he is also living his best life. Sunday morning my husband and I went for a bike ride. Typically my riding partner is my son, but he has been otherwise engaged, and so my husband has accompanied me for the past two weeks. Here’s a little peek into our marriage: he has an e-bike, I do not, I take six cardio workouts a week, he does not. So I feel that we are more or less equally matched, woman versus machine. However! Here is a word of warning: if you let the guy with the e-bike choose the route, there might be a LOT of uphill. His preference is to go up, up, up into the orchards, and my preference is to go flatter, by the creek. We are taking turns choosing the route, is what I’m saying. Anyway, it’s been a fun weekend, and now here we are, in September. Happy September, friends! xo

Nicole’s Favourite Things: The Zucapocalypse Edition

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August was a bit of a wild ride for me: I took an epic road trip to a family reunion, my husband and older son were gone for three weeks, the garden went completely rogue, my pretend sister came for a visit, I spent lots of one-on-one time with my younger son, and, just recently, I began watching Season Two of NYPD Blue. Those of you who know me know that NYPD Blue is, strangely enough, one of my favourite television shows ever, but I have only ever watched Season One. I could never bear to watch the departure of John Kelly, which left me at a watching impasse. Have I watched Season One in its entirety multiple times? Yes I have. And now, after approximately two decades of this, I am ready to move on to Season Two which, I should probably note, originally aired in 1994. I AM READY.

I have a lot of non-television Favourites this month, though, and since September is SUNDAY, it is time to tell you about them!

I’ve Been Itching To Tell You About This

A few weeks ago I mentioned the myriad leprosy-like spots on my lower legs due to biting flies that resulted from the family reunion. At one point they were so painful and so itchy – not to mention so unsightly – that I wondered if it would be less painful to saw my own legs off mid-calf, and walk around on the jagged ends of my tibia. It was honestly agonizing.

I had some 0.5% cortisone cream in my medicine chest but it was a) ineffective, and b) expired. Possibly those two things are related. Anyway, I discovered this extra strength hydrocortisone cream; I thought I’d try the store brand as well as the Polysporin, and I am so happy to report that both really do work. If you, too, find yourself in a situation where you are considering amputation just to stop itching for One Damn Second, then give these a try!

Is That A Zucchini In Your Pocket Or…

Well, you knew you weren’t going to get through a summertime Favourite Things without more garden news, didn’t you? It’s insane. Every single day I’m picking a bowlful of tomatoes, as well as some late-season raspberries, and at least two or three zucchinis of various sizes.

Friends. The zucchini situation is out of control. Every single day I’m adding it to stir-fries, I’m making it into chips, I’m roasting it, I’m grating and freezing it, I’m sauteeing it, I’m baking it into every single thing I can think of: muffins, cake, brownies, loaves, and even, during a particularly low moment, cookies.

The cookies were great, by the way. Anyway, despite all that this is my current situation:

Every day I use up a zucchini and then I go into the garden and there are three more to be picked. I am overrun.

I have given away at least fifteen of these monsters and, despite keeping on top of the garden and harvesting them every day, they just keep coming.

But it’s not all about the veggies, although it’s mostly about the veggies. The flowers are beautiful too.

Feeling Fried

Up until this past week, when the temperatures have cooled off a bit, it has been too hot to cook, even though I have a well-insulated oven and an air-conditioned house. Hot meals have just not appealed. I have not really cooked dinner in August, other than this past week, nor have I for the entire month of July. Instead, we have been subsisting almost entirely on salads, bowls, and wraps, with the occasional barbeque thrown in there. Now, of course I have turned on the stove to cook the quinoa, pasta, noodles, or rice for those bowls and salads, but I was doing that early in the day and just assembling dinner at the regular mealtime.

I have been relying a lot on my air fryer; I always do when making chicken for the guys, but I have been using it a lot this summer for plant-based proteins like chickpeas. I have a double basket air fryer, so I can dedicate each basket to meat and non-meat items.

I usually roast chickpeas in the oven, but now that I’ve done them in the air fryer, I’m not going back. The result is so nice and crunchy!

I’ve also done some zucchini in the air fryer, which was really tasty.

I have an idea! my son suggested this week. How about next year, you plant LESS zucchini?

Tea (Towel) For Two

Last fall my dear friend Suzanne (HI SUZANNE) sent me a housewarming gift, and I think of her every time I use these precious tea towels. I wish I could reciprocate by sending her zucchini.

I mean. What could be more appropriate?

It’s true. I do.

The Hardest Part Is…

It’s been said that the hardest part of any workout is just getting started, but I would say that no, that’s not true. The hardest part is putting on a sports bra.

I go through what the Edies would call four Costume Changes a day, which makes for a lot of laundry, certainly, but with my current schedule there is no getting around this. In the morning I change out of my pajamas – always a matching pair! – into a yoga tank and leggings. I take my yoga practice, which is followed by what I think of as My Vigourous Exercise, a combination of the elliptical machine, the Peloton, and strength training. After that, I am very, very sweaty.

Whatever you are picturing right now, in terms of sweatiness? Multiply that by 100. When I say “sweaty,” I mean that there is a literal pool of sweat under the Peloton and my clothes are actually soaked, such that they make a wet thud when I drop them into my laundry basket. You could wring out my clothes and get another whole puddle; if I weighed myself I would probably drop several pounds of water weight after each workout. It’s a lot.

I don’t shower until around 9 or 10 in the morning, after I have walked Rex and worked in the garden, for obvious reasons. This means that I require another Costume Change, as I cannot possibly function in completely sweat-soaked clothes. I usually put on a tee and leggings, and since I don’t want to get my nice bras all sweaty, I put on a sports bra.

Why are sports bras the most difficult item to don in the world? I don’t know, but they are even on a day when my skin is not damp and sticky from a workout. How, friends, are we putting on our sports bras? Do we shimmy them on from the bottom up, do we pull them on and get our shoulders stuck from the top? Do we find ourselves partially strangled, with one breast supported and one arm tangled into the straps? What do we do? There is no easy way. I was so tired of this gymnastic routine that I searched and found a bra at lululemon that fastens in the front, and it has been a game changer.

I don’t know how I got this far in life without having one of these. I mean, you put it on like a jacket and then zip it up. It’s so simple! It also has great support, not that I really need it for dog walking, but it’s nice not to be bouncing around.

Outfit of the Month

Although I was distressed to get rid of a towering pile of ill-fitting jeans, including a pair from 2008, I am in love with these new crop jeans. The brand is Silver and the cut is Suki, and they are so comfortable and stretchy, without becoming baggy and stretched-out by midday, which is really saying something. I love them so much I bought two pair in different washes. To assuage my low-level guilty feelings about buying all new pants and contributing to the environmental disaster that is the textile industry, I wore this cute, light, 3/4 sleeve cardigan that I bought at Jacob circa 2014. The top is from Gap from a few years ago, the sandals are Skechers, and the bag is one I bought at lululemon back when I first started teaching yoga. It’s a workhorse!

I wore this outfit to go shopping with my older son, who’s moving back to university on Saturday!

See the holes in the garden behind me? That’s from deer. They haven’t been eating our (deer resistant) plants, happily, but they have been sauntering through the yard in the middle of the night, when our resident deer-chaser, Rexie, is asleep. I’ve also been awakened several times by howling coyotes outside our window, and the other evening my son said hey Mom, don’t let Rex out for a while. It turns out there was a mother bear with two cubs wandering through our property. It’s like I’m living in Lorne Greene’s New Wilderness, which, along with The Muppets, was my favourite television show when I was a kid. It’s been a journey from The Muppets and Lorne Greene to NYPD Blue, just as it’s been a journey from my 2008 jeans to today. Life, it’s a wild ride, isn’t it? I hope you’ve had a just-wild-enough August, and if there’s anything you’ve loved this month, I would love to hear it. xo

Waisting Away

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Over a year ago, I noticed something that I had literally never noticed before, and that was that every single woman over a certain age that I knew, or even encountered in a casual way, sported a thickened waist and a soft tummy. I first noticed it in one of my classes, and that was what struck me: all of these beautiful, fit, active, strong women, these women who could stand in warrior poses for extended periods, who gamely planked and held boat pose while I told them corny jokes to pass the time, they all had the same extended waistline. It did not diminish them in any way.

It is a well-known part of the perimenopausal experience, and it is a part of life, should we be so lucky to make it this far. Just like when our breasts and hips develop during puberty, so does our waistline expand as our estrogen plummets. There is a medical explanation for this, and it is that the extra padding around the midsection is our body’s way of holding on to estrogen with all its might. It is unavoidable.

Now, you might be saying no, no, it is avoidable, look at so-and-so, she is over fifty and she’s as slim as ever, to which I would respond in one of four ways: a) it’s possible that person has a relationship with a doctor’s office that I do not have, b) it’s possible that person has a relationship with food that I do not wish to have, c) it’s possible that person won the genetic lottery, but that leads to d) even with winning the genetic lottery, eating next to nothing, and having cosmetic medical intervention, that person probably still has a larger waistline than she did when she was 20, or 30, or even 45.

Here is my confession: prior to around age 48, I privately thought that I might be an exception to the rule of the middle-aged spread. I am a very active woman, I consume vast amounts of fiber, water, fruits, and vegetables, and, with the exception of my pregnancies, I have always had a fairly small waist and flat stomach. I didn’t spend much time thinking about belly fat because I did not think it was something that would affect me.

Then, a few months ago, I found myself rage-cleaning my closet. I amassed a huge pile of pants that either no longer buttoned up, or that did button up, but the waist cut into my body in such an uncomfortable way that made me worry about losing circulation to my lower body. If there is anything worse for self esteem than not being able to breathe when sitting down in jeans, I’m not sure what it is.

This month marks the four-year anniversary of the last time I weighed myself. I have no plans on breaking that streak, so I have no idea if my weight has changed over the years. It probably has. I think I am generally the same size everywhere else, except for my waist and general torso area. I used to have a moderate hourglass figure, but now it is more like a rectangle, and the week before my period it resembles an oblong balloon, of the type used to make balloon animals.

And the truth is, other than the annoyance and expense of having to buy new pants with a more forgiving waist and a curvier fit, I don’t really care. No one is more surprised than me by my indifference, believe me. But I feel like I have wasted too much time and energy in my one wild and precious life thinking in a negative way about my body and about food. I will not do that any longer, or at least, I will try not to.

Because this is what life is, isn’t it? Our bodies go through different iterations, just like our minds, our thoughts, and our interests. I’m not the same person I was at twenty, THANK GOD, and so why should I think my body should be the same?

I’m still thinking about that memoir, in which the author’s mother was so happy to have lost so much weight, the weight loss itself due to terminal illness. Something really distressing occurred to me. I realized that every woman I know who has lost a significant amount of weight either did so due to illness – physical or mental – or suffered physical or mental repercussions FROM losing a significant amount of weight. Our society’s conflation of thinness with health is flawed, to say the least. One need only point to the Minnesota Starvation Experiment as proof of the life-long mental toll that even a diet of limited duration can take.

Not to mention a lifetime of societal conditioning that positively reinforces women who take up less space, and that pressures women to become smaller and smaller. My son said to me the other day that it’s so weird that diets for men are like, the Carnivore Diet, and diets for women are like “eat 200 calories a day.” He’s not wrong. There is certainly societal pressure for men’s bodies to look a particular way, but it tends to be a pressure to be stronger, more muscular, more ripped, more more more. Whereas, for women it’s all about being less. It’s almost like society wants men to be stronger and women to be weaker. Wow, what a shocking new idea, I bet no one has ever realized that before.

Well. Be the change you want to see, I guess. There are two non-surgical options here, as far as I can see, looking over my pile of ill-fitting pants: I could futilely rage against the perimenopausal machine, restricting my diet and cutting out wine, margaritas, and cake, obsessing over calories and obliterating any comestible joy in my life, or I could lean in, put on my new pants, and marvel at the natural rhythms of the aging female body. The end result is going to be the same – this soft, rounded tummy is going NOWHERE – but to quote the Serenity Prayer, it’s all about the wisdom of knowing the difference.

Weekly Reading

Such A Bad Influence. Suspense is not usually a genre I read, but I enjoyed this book about a young influencer who mysteriously goes missing. It’s a well-plotted book with a really interesting ending, but it’s also a smart commentary on living a life online, and what happens to those children who “grew up” on the internet.

The State of Affairs. Infidelity is a topic that is quite fascinating to me, particularly how it is portrayed in fictional stories. This book, by a noted psychotherapist, delves into the definitions, causes, and results of infidelity. What is infidelity? Is it, like Bill Clinton (do not get me started on how that man ruined that poor woman’s life) thought, merely intercourse? Is it chatting with a former lover on Facebook? Is it kissing, is it a date, is it a thought, what is it? After the definitions (spoiler: there are many definitions) the book moves on to why people cheat, how they cheat, and what happens to all parties involved afterward. It’s a really well-researched, fascinating book.

It’s plum, peach, and nectarine season around here, and the farm market is full of them! I can never think of the word “plum” without saying in my head “this is a very plum…plum” in the manner of Count Almasy in The English Patient. God, I loved that movie, and wow, would I not have the patience to spend three hours watching it now. Anyway, I took some of these very plum…plums and baked them into a sunken plum cake, recipe from THE cake cookbook. One year ago the city was on fire, if you remember, and so did I ever welcome this lovely rainy weekend, not the least because it was perfect for baking. I also baked zunana muffins, which only used up a quarter of one of my giant zucchinis, and made zucchini chips. Is everything going to contain zucchini from now on? Probably.

It’s the last week of August, can you even believe it? I cannot! Enjoy your week, friends! xo