Nicole’s Favourite Things: The Zucapocalypse Edition

Posted on by

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

Posted on by

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

Fun Fun Fun

Posted on by

I spent a lot of time by myself over the past couple of weeks, and it turns out that when this happens I end up pondering concepts that should be, in theory, fairly simple, but by the time I’m finished mulling things over, words themselves have lost all meaning.

I love delving into semantics as much as the next person, and so when I listened to a recent Ologies episode on, of all things, Fun, I ended up thinking about it for days. Days. I throw that word around like nobody’s business; I am always having fun, or saying this is so fun, or contemplating wouldn’t it be fun to have Greek salad for dinner? I have come to the conclusion that most of the time, when I think something is fun, what I am really saying is that it is enjoyable or that it brings me happiness or contentment, and that is not really the same thing as fun. If someone asked What do you do for fun? I might say something about gardening, or walking with Rex, or reading, or riding my Peloton. But are those things actually fun? I love them all, I feel joyful and happy while doing them, but I’m not sure if they can be classified as purely fun. When I think of fun, I think of something that completely takes me out of myself, mentally and physically.

I’ve analyzed the word fun so much that I am now one step away from giving you the Webster’s Dictionary definition.

I am a bit of a cozy homebody type, and yet I also love to travel, and after much thought I have come to the conclusion that my most fun experiences have occurred when I am travelling. I think of Disney World with the guys, I think of zip-lining in Mexico, I think of boogie boarding in Maui.

And if I think about it even more, I think that so many of my most fun experiences can be traced back to my friend Jen (HI JEN). She and I have karaoked Hold On both in public and not, we learned to zumba poolside in Playa Mujeres, we laughed until we cried about lizards having sex and public finger blasting, we became hysterical while listening to a cover band singing Smooth Operator, and together we became overly involved in puzzles and the game Mexican Train over New Year’s. We can sit together in companionable silence while we read books, we can giggle over margaritas and wine, we can walk and swim and do things together and I never, ever get tired of her. She’s the sister I never had, I love her kids and husband dearly, and she was here visiting me for an extended girls’ weekend!

WE HAD FUN.

We read books and went to my favourite bookstore, we had margaritas on the deck in the middle of the day, we went to a wine tasting and then came home and drank more wine as we watched a movie, we walked and did puzzles like we were in some kind of professional puzzling competition. I was sad to see her go, but also, in a twist of the philosophical saying, happy that this extended weekend existed at all.

Softening the blow of Jen’s leaving was the arrival of my husband and son, home from their very long road trip in the camper up north. They drove up the Dempster Highway to Tutoyatuk, they swam in the Arctic Ocean and hiked along glaciers, clocking almost 9000 kilometres in total. It was definitely the trip of a lifetime. They had fun!

Weekly Reading

I forgot to mention that I had a DNF this month; it was the book Rouge, which I tried twice to read, and just could not. I guess I’m not a magical kind of gal. But the books I did read this week I really enjoyed.

Funny Story. When Daphne’s fiance calls off their wedding to get together with Miles’ girlfriend, Daphne finds herself in need of a place to live. She moves in with Miles, temporarily, and together they come up with a plan to “get back” at the newly engaged couple – they pretend THEY are a couple. OMG you won’t believe what happens next. Okay, yes you will, you will absolutely be able to predict everything that happens, but we don’t read Emily Henry books to be shocked and surprised, do we? We read them because they are wonderfully cute romances with amazing dialogue and fun banter. We read them because they have heart, and lovely characters, and are just all-round fun. Two fun facts: just like I thought Nichelle was a name I had made up when I was 13 only to discover that no, it is a name, I also thought I was the only person in the world who identified with Charlotte Lucas in Pride and Prejudice. Daphne also identifies with Charlotte Lucas!!! Second fun fact: Emily Henry has just had her 34th birthday, and I am in awe of her incredible success in the romance writing world. The tl;dr on this is that I really, really enjoyed it. It’s a satisfying book and I always love a “chosen family” side plot.

Early Morning Riser. I first read this in 2021, and my impression at that time was that it was extremely delightful, and also, that I could not at all describe it. On my second read, I think it is even more delightful than I remembered, and also, there is no way to really describe the delightfulness that is this book. There is no discernable plot. The romantic lead is – and there is no other way to describe him, really – a dirtbag who has slept with basically every woman in his small Michigan town, and most of the women in the surrounding area. And yet! Yet this book is so warm and joyful and bighearted, and it is hysterically, laugh-out-loud funny, if you are a person who shares my sense of humour and also love of Jane Austen-style wit. It’s a series of vignettes and character sketches of people in this small town, and it’s a testament to chosen family – theme of the week? – and all kinds of love. There is a scene where the protagonist is preparing her children for bath time, and it was so wonderful that I read it at least six times. I love this author and her writing style is GOALS for me. If you are a person who requires a firm plot and definable theme, and if you do NOT like an understated style of humour, then this won’t work for you, probably. But it is a near-perfect read for me.

I hope you all are having a beautiful August! The garden is going rogue with produce, my second planting of greens has sprouted, life is good. Have a FUN week, friends! xo

Don’t It Make My Pink Jobs Blue

Posted on by

In grad school I had a copy of the Feminist Manifesto, along with a poster of a fish riding a bicycle, taped to the walls of my office, and I feel that says everything you need to know. I am firmly a Rosie the Riveter woman at heart, and yet in the past two and a half decades, I have become a little lazy and complacent. My husband is an incredibly handy person, and so I have just let all jobs requiring handiness to slide into his corner; in theory I do not believe in gendered division of labour, but my practice seems to tell a different story.

Right now, my husband is on a weeks-long trip with my older son, and is mostly out of cell phone range.

In the past week since he has been gone, I have dealt with a non-working air conditioner along with a weird communication problem with the air conditioning people, I have learned about the issue with the air conditioner and how to keep it working until the part for the permanent solution arrives, I have destroyed and cleaned up an ant infestation, and I have resolved an issue with our water filtration system. All of these situations arose the second he left town, and really could not wait until his return. Particularly the ants.

Actually, dealing with the ants was the easiest of all. After using the shop vac and some seemingly useless ant traps, I overcame my distaste for harsh chemicals, and committed what can only be described as chemical warfare on my baseboards. It was ant carnage. Typically I am a person who saves insects and puts them outside, but a colony of ants taking up residence in my kitchen is an entirely different story. Once I saw a few of them on my countertop it was an all-out war.

The problem with the air conditioning means that I am checking the heat pump every morning for error messages, and happily it has been working. Less happily, while checking the heat pump I heard a beeping alarm and figured out it was coming from the water filtration system, something I know basically nothing about. I started to low-level panic, but I remembered what my cousin Cory’s wife Barb said to me last weekend when I told her about my complete ineptitude regarding vehicular maintenance: You know, Nicole, there is always a user manual.

YES. I am a smart woman, I thought, I can figure this out. I found the user manual. I discovered that the UV lamp and something called a quartz sleeve needed replacing. There were many pages of steps to do so, and I am extremely poor at doing anything requiring mechanical ability or hand-eye coordination, but my younger son is very good at those things. If there is one thing I can do, it’s read, and if there are two things I can do, it is to dictate and delegate. I thought he could do the work and I could read the directions and talk him through it.

We just needed the parts.

I searched the product’s website and found a local distributor. I called, and talked to a lovely fellow named Brent, who assured me that they did have that exact UV lamp in stock, and yes, they were open all day. I cheerfully said I would come by and pick it up, and oh, by the way, did they have this quartz sleeve thing? At this point, Brent interrupted me, in a voice that was tinged with what can only be described as alarm, to ask if I was a “mechanical kind of person.” Probably he wouldn’t ask a man that, but believe me, I was happy he did, because he said it was a “pretty complicated fix” and that many had tried, but not many had succeeded in replacing the quartz sleeve. The uptake of this whole conversation was that this was a service he could provide, and am I free Tuesday? I sure am, and knowing this was a service I could pay for would have saved me twenty minutes of conversation, but I was relieved that this precluded me probable crying bouts and possibly a having flood or contaminated water.

Speaking of floods, the family reunion took place in a campground, and my parents, along with other relatives, had secured the services of a company that rents trailers; the company sets it all up, and all you need to do is show up. Perfection! I was sleeping in a bunk bed, which I haven’t done since I was at actual sleepaway camp, and, predictably, I fell out of it on the first night. I was climbing down to use the bathroom at 3 in the morning but my foot got caught up in my sleeping bag, and I ended up falling on the floor with a dramatic bang. My mother sat up, screaming What happened? She was right to be alarmed, not because I was hurt – I wasn’t really – but because so many things had already gone wrong with our little trailer. She probably thought the whole thing exploded or something. Prior to my tumble, the handle broke off of what we learned the hard way was a non-working fridge, slicing my finger as it broke, we discovered that the water heater and shower were both non-functional, and, probably relatedly, the water in the trailer was slowly leaking out of the bottom, resulting in an enormous puddle underneath. Do you know your trailer is leaking? every single person asked us, but fortunately, the aforementioned Cousin Cory, a seasoned RVer, managed things. Cory also thought that the loud bang in the night was someone breaking into his storage container, and so he was pretty happy that it was just me, falling out of bed. By the end of the next day, every single relative, including small children, had asked me if I was okay after my fall, so news travels fast.

Coming home to the ant situation was actually better than the biting fly situation we had at the campground. If ever you want to be protected from biting insects, please sit beside me. I am a magnet for them. Everyone else is safe around me. My lower legs, and my ankles in particular, look like I have a mix between the chicken pox and leprosy. I guess my foot fetish Only Fans page will have to wait another day.

On the topic of feet, Rex was absolutely filthy by the time I picked him up from the boarding kennel; his white paws were a gross shade of beige. He was pretty grubby going in, but after a week of playing with all the other dogs, the situation was dire. This is not my first dog boarding rodeo, so I had the foresight to book him in a few days after his return, and he was so beautifully clean for three hours, at which time he went rolling in the dusty dry grass. I knew the gig would be up after his walk the following day anyway.

As Rex repeatedly rolled around, getting dirty, I was busy in my garden, which, in my absence, had gone completely rogue. I had picked all the zucchinis before I left, and still, this was waiting for me on my return:

That was from one day, and I have picked multiple zucchinis since. I am overwhelmed by zucchini, and also tomatoes:

Also: my first red peppers!

The greens are all done for the year, though, and so I am going to replant in a week or two when it’s not so hot. I’ve always dreamed of having a “fall garden” so I hope this works.

Weekly Reading

I Capture The Castle. I had never even heard of this book until Engie (HI ENGIE) suggested it for the Cool Bloggers Book Club, which I highly suggest you join! You neither have to be cool nor a blogger, but you should probably read the book. I won’t put my thoughts here – I usually read the books on schedule but I had this from the library and it had to go back, so I raced through it – instead, I will be commenting at the book club. I will say that it was absolutely NOTHING like I expected, and also, I am happy to be alive in the year 2024. Look around, look around, how lucky we are to be alive right now.

No One Tells You This. The author of this book is the creator of the excellent podcast Wilder, which I totally recommend, but that’s not why I picked this book up. I heard her speaking on another podcast, and she told an anecdote about her mother, who had struggled with her weight her whole life. The author went to see her when she was dying of Parkinson’s-related dementia, and was taken aback by how terribly thin she was. The author’s mother was excited – so very happy – about her newfound thinness, in the face of her imminent death, and this was so poignant and moving that I knew I’d have to read it. “Look how thin I am! Can you believe it?” she says over and over. This is a very engaging memoir of a single, childfree woman in the year after she turned forty. Two parts especially of note: when she is a waitress, and tells a coworker she’s envious of a starlet who walks in. “‘Oh no’, she said, turning to me sternly, ‘don’t you think that. She has plenty of her own problems which are just as terrible to her as yours are to you.'” She also talks about her friends: “It was only fifteen years later…that I understood that sometimes saving someone simply means opening the door, letting them in for a deeply mundane holiday celebration, and asking absolutely nothing of them other than that they take up the space you’ve made for them.” It was a beautiful story of a woman working through her own life.

Speaking of a woman working through her life, last week felt like it was three months long, dealing with so many issues. Let’s hope that this week is much more smooth, and that you all are gliding through August with style! And hopefully not broken air-conditioning. xo

Five (Plus Two) (So, Seven) For Friday: The I’m Back, and With Books Edition

Posted on by
  • I’m back from a solo trip to a family reunion that happened over the long weekend. First and foremost, it was great. There’s something so special about being around people who you have known your whole life. I loved seeing all my cousins, I loved meeting distant relatives I had never met before, and I loved spending a lot of time with my parents. However. It was a lot of travel to get there and back, and when I say “a lot” I mean a total of three flights – one of which was cancelled, rescheduled, rescheduled again, and then delayed two and a half hours – and fifteen hours in the car, with my dad driving. Fifteen. Hours. In the car. I first flew to Calgary where I was met by my parents for a two hour drive to their place, where we stayed for a couple of days until driving eleven hours over two days to the reunion in Saskatchewan. After the festive weekend, my dad drove me two hours to Regina where I flew home, first connecting in Calgary, whence the delay. The good news is that it wasn’t my first flight that was delayed, and also that I left Calgary before an enormous electrical storm with hail shut the whole airport down and caused massive plane damage. In other good news, I did not revert to sullen teenhood after spending so much time in the backseat of my parents’ car; I had worried that I would start angstily staring out the window listening to gloomy music on my Walkman. I did, however, pop my earbuds in a few times to drown out Helen and Morty Seinfeld in the front seat, but instead of listening to The End or Goodbye, Cruel World, I listened to podcasts; mostly about skincare, but also to my new obsession, Dear Prudence.
  • I was reminded of the book I had recently read, entitled Wellness, in which one of the characters makes a lot of money by suggesting that air travel be made as miserable as possible, and so even a slight upgrade to the experience would lead to satisfied customers. Wow, did that resonate. After my flights home got cancelled, rescheduled to arrive at midnight, and then rescheduled for daytime but downgraded from a 737 to a prop plane, I paid a marginal fee for a seat upgrade and was unreasonably excited when I got unlimited vegan snacks.
  • Do you have a special travel treat? Mine is a Subway sandwich, which I only ever get while travelling. For decades my Subway order has been the following: avocado, tomato, lettuce, green peppers and pickles on whole wheat, with house sauce and mustard. Once I discovered I’d be in the Calgary airport for several hours, I decided to seek out Subway for lunch; there was one in the international terminal, which I had just frequented in May. I walked across two terminals only to discover that it has GONE. After staring at the blank wall space in which it used to reside, I congratulated myself for getting my steps in before turning around. I found a little wine bar that served avocado toast, and even though it was 2:00 in the afternoon, and I famously have trouble with swelling during air travel, particularly when alcohol is involved, I enjoyed a couple of glasses of Malbec. No regrets.
  • I read Come and Get It, and it was one of the best books I have read all year. I mean, this book could be a MasterClass on how to craft complex characters and compelling storylines. I could NOT put this down! This author is a master at creating flawed, yet deeply relatable characters that the reader becomes incredibly invested in, and the story – which deals with three college roommates, their RA, and a writer – is just so good. I kept thinking of the adage “it’s not the crime, it’s the cover-up,” because each character makes mistakes and end up in webs of lies of varying degrees, with varying consequences. I could relate so much to all of the interiority of all of the characters. I read this author’s first book and liked it fine, but this absolutely blew it out of the water for me. Oh, and fun fact: when I was a young teen I wrote a series of semi-autobiographical angsty short stories (possibly after long car rides to Saskatchewan?), and the main character (ME) was named Nichelle. I thought that was a clever, made-up name, but one of the mothers in this book is named Nichelle. I have NEVER seen that before! ARE WE ON THE SAME WAVELENGTH?
  • I really expected to love Thrity Umrigar’s latest, The Museum of Failures, as I have really enjoyed most of her work, but, well, no. This book deals with families, secrets, and how things aren’t always as they seem. The theme of “hurt people hurt people” pervades the book and typically I find this very moving. I did not, though. For some reason I just could not connect with or become invested in the characters and story. Maybe it was the wrong timing for me, I don’t know. It just dragged and was flat for me.
  • On the other hand, I did not think I would enjoy Yours Truly as much as I did! This was a very cute, easy reading romance and I was one hundred percent here for it. One of the characters has social anxiety, which is quite foreign to me, as I am not an overthinker about social situations at all. I felt it was a great insight into the minds of some of my anxious friends. It was just a lovely, funny, feel-good book and I think it a perfect summer read! Plus, it features a three-legged Bernese mountain dog named Lieutenant Dan, which probably bumped the whole reading experience up at least half a star.
  • I love reading a book that takes place in a location where I have been! Hotline is the story of a single mother in 1986-87, who escapes the terror in Lebanon to come to Montreal. It is a touching story about the immigrant experience; although qualified as a French teacher she takes a job as a hotline operator for a diet food company, and ends up becoming involved in her clients’ lives. Living in Calgary, I always marvelled at the people who came from warm climates to live in such a harshly cold one, and wondered what that would be like. The author paints the picture very well, of finding appropriate clothing, of figuring out Canadian culture, of navigating French/ English ideas, and of coming to terms with the fact that her education and experience don’t count for much in this new place of ice storms and strange food. 

It’s been a somewhat bumpy reentry in the homefront, but I am feeling more organized and that I have gotten my feet back under me after some unexpected complications and situations. More on that later, but for now, I’m going to enjoy my Friday. It’s a little hot for Malbec, but I see margaritas in my future. I’m looking forward to catching up with everyone! How are you all? What did I miss? Tell me everything. xo

Six Wildly Random, Semi-Related Things

Posted on by

Gnot Cool. I enjoy the podcast Decoder Ring, and this past week they had an episode about The History of Lawn Ornaments, and the first half of it was about garden gnomes. I am here for this content! Earlier, CCR (HI CCR) sent me this article about a group IN KELOWNA called the Gnome Restoration Society. At first I was charmed by this idea, then I read it closely and realized that the society TOOK a man’s gnomes, repainted them, and returned them. Doesn’t that feel a bit presumptuous? If I looked out my window one morning and my gnomes were gone, I would be absolutely furious, and/or depressed. Then to return them, all repainted? Keep your hands off Salvadore, Gnome Restoration Society!

What Could It Be? At least twice a day I think about an interview I heard months ago of a woman who is in an open marriage and wrote a book about it; it was one of the wildest, and kind of saddest, things I have ever heard. During the interview she spoke about her husband; she said there was one thing that she would NOT do, sexually speaking, that her husband wanted her to do, and so he enjoyed his part of the open marriage with someone who would do it. My question is, what could this possibly be? She had already talked about her enthusiasm for the following: three-ways and multiple partners at a time, pansexuality, oral, anal, BDSM, spanking, sex toys, dressing up, being tied up, tying her husband up, pornography, filming and being filmed. What else is there? The reason I think of this at least twice a day is that the product that she recommended for the listeners is a waterproof, wipeable dog blanket that is used to cover furniture to protect it from muddy paws, dog hair, and the like. She, however, does not have a dog. She uses it as her sex blanket. I mean. Okay? I guess there are a lot of fluids involved for her, maybe more than I generally think there are. Anyway, I guess I was influenced, not for a sex blanket, but for my actual dog, and not for furniture, but for my car. I found something that covers the back seat and keeps it clean because wow, Rex is pretty dirty after our walks, particularly now that he cools his paws in the creek and then walks on the dirty, sandy paths. But seriously. WHAT ELSE IS THERE?

Hitting The Floor. Listen, it’s not his fault. Rex has giant furry paws and he cannot help being so filthy. Well, it’s partly his fault, because when I’m gardening he rolls down the bank beside the garden, over and over, and that bank is not watered, so he ends up constantly covered in dead grass, which ends up all over the house. This is in addition to all the dirt and sand that gradually falls out of his paws during the day post-walking; well, I feel like I could hire someone to vacuum five times a day every day, and that might keep our floors clean. MIGHT. As it is we are all constantly grabbing the vacuum or broom in a vain attempt to keep from being ankle-deep in filth. We have a very clean and tidy, organized house with the exception of our floors. Our Roombas just are no match for this, we have to do it manually. Well, I remember when Barkley died and the floors were clean; I don’t want that trade-off, so I guess we will all just keep cleaning in the hopes that the floors wills stay clean for more than 30 minutes.

Attack of the Killer Squash. I have never grown a pumpkin before and the plant is literally taking over the garden. Every single day it’s extended its tendrils a little further, and has a few more flowers and tiny tiny pumpkins on its extensive greenery, and I know what I should do is trim it down, but I don’t want to. I want to see what happens. Also, I’m not Almanzo Wilder here, I am not going to start feeding a pumpkin milk so I can win the blue ribbon at the county fair; if I end up with dozens of tiny pumpkins, well, it will be perfect for the upcoming Decorative Gourd Season.

My zucchinis and butternut squash plants are massive as well; all of these were grown from seed and they seem to be in a battle with the pumpkin.

Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma. It was serendipitous timing that this book came up on my library holds, because there has been a very upsetting revelation recently with regards to someone I deeply admire. If you know me at all, you can probably guess to whom I am referring, but please, I beg of you – I AM ACTUALLY BEGGING, FRIENDS – do not broach the subject with me. I do not want to discuss it, not now, and possibly not ever. But I did find this book extremely helpful for me to process my very complex, very private feelings, as it deals with separating art from artists. Can we separate the art from the artist? If we can, should we? It’s a very nuanced and thoughtful book, the thesis of which is that there is no one answer, and every individual person’s history will inform their reaction to such behaviour, which feels like an obvious conclusion, and yet it was one I appreciated. The author is a memoirist, and can’t seem to help herself – this nonfiction book took a memoir turn in the latter third. I wasn’t surprised to see that the examples of women who were “monstrous” were those who sacrificed their maternal and familial duties for their art, as she drew parallels with her own life, which, okay? In terms of the book, that seemed like a real choice, particularly since the examples of men were true examples of monstrous behaviour: rape, violence, pedophilia. Perhaps the author is making a statement on how men and women are viewed in general by society, and how judged women are for things like not paying enough attention to their children, and how venerated men are for being manly geniuses, who cares if they are violent, mean, and abusive – Picasso and Hemingway are two main examples. It is sad, of course, that Sylvia Plath neglected her children and then killed herself, but that does not seem to be even close to being on par with, say, the actions of Bill Cosby. Maybe that’s the point. Maybe that’s the whole point. Anyway, this book was well worth the read, for me, and gave me a lot of things to think about.

It’s Belle. I had one of those magical Costco trips, wherein I entered the store to complete chaos: lineups snaking down the store, aisles crammed with people waiting for samples, an inability to get from one aisle to the other without cart road rage, until I finished shopping, at which point there were no lineups at all. I sailed over to the checkout and the fellow who was boxing up my groceries said, in the most genial way, “Hi! Who’s your favourite Disney character?” It reminded me of an interview I heard recently where a woman talked about her hatred for small talk and social niceties like asking how are you? This should, in the mind of the interviewee, be abolished. It is useless, she said, and she related a story about how she used to hang up on and threaten to break up with the man she eventually married, until he stopped asking her how she was. It struck me as terribly pretentious and also, we live in a society? Asking other people about themselves, even in the most banal of ways, shows that you are not a narcissistic asshole? However, I will concede that there is only one real answer when a stranger asks how are you, whereas there are many answers to what’s your favourite Disney character, so I think this guy might be on to something. After all, he would probably see thousands of people a day. I related this to my husband later, and he wondered if it was only Disney movies, or if the entire Disney universe is included – Star Wars, Marvel, Muppets – in which case I might have to amend my initial response to include Miss Piggy.

Take a Break! Run Away With Me For The Summer. It’s time for my Summer Blog Break! Take care of yourselves, friends, and I will see you in a couple of weeks. xo

Summer Yummers

Posted on by

I am absolutely, without a doubt, a Summer Girl. It is my favourite season, and I feel like last year I was cheated out of it, a bit, with the move. Everything was so busy and so stressful and so emotional – I sobbed with hopelessness in the parking lot of the library when they said I couldn’t have a card until I had an official identification proving my Kelowna address, as a small example of my mental state – that I didn’t really get to enjoy the season. So, this summer I am soaking up every second of it.

All of this is to say that when I say wow, it’s hot, it is observational, not a complaint. This Calgary girl will never get over the novelty that opening the front door is similar to opening an oven door; after all, it’s a dry heat and I have a shady deck to lounge on and an air-conditioned house to retreat to when it’s too much. As a brief aside, if you have air conditioning, what do temperature you set it on? We keep ours at 24C, which I feel is just enough to take the edge off without having constant cold air blowing. I like to be comfortable in my summer clothes inside.

I’m not sure if this is my body’s way of making sure I can enjoy my outdoor time before it gets too hot to be active, but my natural wake-up lately is in the three’s. I have long been a 4:00 riser, but for the past couple of weeks, when temperatures have been soaring into the late 30s, I have been up for the day at a time that starts with a “3.” I hope this is just a Rhythm of Nature thing, and not a harbinger of things to come, in which I am waking up earlier and earlier until I am not sleeping at all. I guess I’ll see what happens in a month, and in the meantime, it’s nice to be able to see my son before he heads out to work in the morning.

In other heat-related news, my meal preparation changes vastly in the summer; our dinners are light and easy, and I use the oven only rarely. This is despite the fact the oven is new and very well-insulated, and, as I mentioned before, we have air conditioning; between those two factors I don’t worry about the house heating up, but still, I’m all about the low-effort meals.

It’s been a little while since I shared a week of meals; I am inspired by my gorgeously talented friend Suzanne to do so (HI SUZANNE). As a note, half of the meals I made are meatless, but I did use my air fryer to prepare chicken for the guys Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday. Do you have an air fryer? It’s an appliance that is symbolic of my consumer life with my husband: he wanted to buy it, I said we didn’t need it, he bought it, and now I use it all the time. You would not believe how often this happens in my marriage. Anyway, it’s brilliant for our family because it has two baskets, one I keep pristine for the vegetables, and the other is used for meat only. I cannot tell you how much this has changed my life; I hate hate hate cooking meat, and this has made the process almost painless.

I don’t use a lot of recipes in my cooking; the kids call it “Mom’s Free-Styling Again.” I kind of throw things together until they seem good to me, like the wild thing that I am.

Monday: Asian-Inspired Noodle Salad

I’ve been making a variation of this Asian-inspired noodle salad for years; I cook the noodles and some edamame in the morning, so that it’s nice and chilled by dinnertime, and I add in any vegetables I feel like. In this case, it’s grated carrots with chopped peppers and zucchini from the garden. I added cashews and some sauteed tofu, plus garden green onions and cilantro. The dressing is made up of equal parts sesame oil, rice vinegar, and soy sauce, with a little bit less of a part of lime juice. I add a big spoonful of brown sugar and another of chili garlic sauce, plus some minced garlic and grated ginger.

Tuesday: DIY Tortilla Wraps

This is my go-to for a quick and easy meal; I slice up any vegetables that are around – avocado, pepper, tomato, and garden lettuce and green onion, and I set out hummus, salsa, and cheese, along with the aforementioned air fryer chicken breasts.

Wednesday: The Big Salad, With Lots Of Stuff In It

My most prolific garden vegetable, by far, is kale; we have been enjoying kale salads multiple times a week for two months now. I, like Elaine Benes, love a big salad, with lots of stuff in it, and this week I added candied pecans, roasted chickpeas, apple, dried blueberries, and goat cheese crumbles to the kale. I served it with a balsamic vinaigrette, and some crusty bread.

Thursday: Pesto Pasta Salad

I have SO much basil; this is but a pittance of what I still have in the garden.

I made up a nice batch of pesto and added it to cold pasta and peas. I also roasted some asparagus, broccoli, and cauliflower, as an exception to my “no oven” guideline.

Friday: My Big Fat Greek Salad

Friday is my favourite day of the week, which calls for my favourite meal of all time, the meal I could eat on repeat every day for the rest of my life: Greek salad with pita and hummus. No matter what the season, I make this meal on Fridays. I have a little tip for those of you who make your own hummus: add a little soft tofu for extra creaminess, and pulse in some (pitted) black olives. Delicious!

Saturday: The Best Thing To Come Out Of Foods Class

This pasta salad has been a summer favourite since 2018, when my younger son brought the recipe home from his junior high Foods class, a class that was a source of much angst since he and his kitchen group of four friends were extremely unpopular with his teacher. I mean, I am always on my kids’ side, but thinking about five teen boys in one group who constantly were making grievous cooking mistakes and in a state of hilarity about it, well, it’s hard to really blame the teacher. Particularly since I knew all these boys and had them in my house and yard many times over the years, I knew what the, how do I say it, vibe was like. She only likes the girls, my son explained, and I felt like I understood the entire situation. Anyway, one thing he did make without disaster was this pasta salad, and I adapted the recipe for my own preferences. I like to set out a lot of veggies, and everyone can build their own dish.

Sunday: BBQ Day

My husband usually grills something on the barbeque on Sundays; this week it was burgers. After the food-poisoning disaster of Canada Day, I found my favourite chipotle black bean burgers again at Costco, after a long hiatus. We also had sweet potato fries and a kale Caesar salad.

Sweets To The Sweet

I baked zucchini loaf with our garden zucchinis and…

It’s an ice cream cake, sort of. I made chocolate banana ice cream for the bottom layer, pulsed Oreo cookies with fudge sauce for the middle, and topped it all with Cool Whip. I used to love DQ cakes, but one such slice would give me at least as much pain as the expired veggie burgers, so I thought to try my hand at something non-dairy. It was a hit!

Weekly Reading

If last week’s theme was infidelity, this week was male authors. I very rarely read books by men, particularly heterosexual men; out of the 75 books I have read this year, 8 are by men, just to give you an idea.

Wellness. When I downloaded this book, I was stunned. How long IS this, I asked. I looked it up: the paper edition is 611 pages. SIX HUNDRED ELEVEN PAGES. That is, in the humble opinion of this gentle reader, way too many pages. And now that I have read it, my question is where was the editor? Was there an editor? This book could have been cut by a third, easily, with no effect at all on the story. Because it’s a really great story, but there is just so much descriptive backstory and whole chapters that could have been condensed to a single paragraph. SO MANY PAGES.
I did have a Mrs Lynde “Isn’t that just like a man?” moment, because doesn’t it seem like these editor-light tomes are always by men?
Anyway, once I got past my initial despair, I found the first two hundred pages to be relatively quick and easy to read, and the subject matter itself is very interesting: it’s about a marriage gone boring. What happens when the fires of anti establishment youth fade into the ashes of just regular, middle aged family life? There are so many segues and they are mostly quite interesting: the placebo effect, Facebook algorithms, how modern parenting is informed by parenting past, and complex familial relationships. All good stuff. But THIS IS TOO LONG. Again, great story, when the writing is good it’s really good, but it badly needs an editor.

Heaven and Earth’s Grocery Store. This was a good story of a Pennsylvania town in 1936; it centres around the Jewish owners of a grocery store, serving a Black community, and the way they work together to help a child who was unfairly institutionalized. There are some truly moving and heart-breaking parts, and it ends in a clever, satisfying way.

I hope you are all having a beautiful, summery week with lots of yummy things! xo