Playing The Fiddle

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What a crazy weekend it has been. The wind really picked up on Friday and the wildfire spread very quickly. We are safe, and hopefully will continue that way, but it’s quite terrifying to be in the midst of a state of emergency, with friends being evacuated and the world being shrouded in smoke. The wind did calm, which helped with firefighting efforts, but the situation is still dire.

It’s an incredibly weird feeling to know that there is panic and tragedy going on right on one’s doorstep, but being completely unable to do anything about it except to wait. In fact, the best thing to do is to just patiently wait at home, to see if any friends need a landing spot, and to not put strain on any public resources. It has a bit of a Fiddle While Rome Burns feeling, literally, not unlike when Calgary had the floods in 2013, or even the early days of the pandemic, when we all just stayed home, refreshing news feeds and texting friends to check in. Also not unlike those times, I distracted myself with baking.

On a lighter subject, let’s talk about something that happened last week, pre-fire.

The bookmarks are still missing. I briefly had a huge surge of hope and optimism, but those hopes have been dashed. Dashed, people. I think the time has come for me to accept this and move on with my life.

The surge of hope came with the discovery of some missing sweaters. To set the stage, I unpacked all of my clothes and organized all my closet and drawers over four weeks ago and I noticed that a few of my very favourite sweaters were not with any of the primary bedroom boxes. I had brought all of my workout clothes and summer outfits in two giant suitcases when I drove out with Rex, but my myriad sweaters and dresses were left in my closet for the movers to pack. Because we were so short of storage in the old house, I kept all my sweaters in rectangular collapsible bags, and stacked them all up on a shelf in my closet. Like Baa Baa Black Sheep, there were three giant bags full, and if I hadn’t organized them that way, the sweaters would have all tumbled down constantly and it would have been impossible to find the one I was looking for. I realized, four weeks ago, that I only had two bags.

It was very curious. All the boxes were unpacked, and that sweater bag was nowhere to be found. The only boxes I hadn’t looked in were the ones in the shed that contained garden implements and my husband’s tools, and I could not imagine the movers would have packed them in those boxes. I started wondering if indeed I DID have three bags, or if in a fit of purging I donated all those sweaters. I didn’t THINK I had, since they were my heaviest, warmest, most favourite winter sweaters, but I couldn’t say for sure. In other words, I was gaslighting myself.

After all, if not with all the clothing, where could they possibly be?

Finally I decided enough was enough. Surely I didn’t donate that giant cozy cardigan that feels like a bathrobe or the expensive-but-dressy swoopy black sweater from lululemon? Surely not! Did I think that because I had one black turtleneck I didn’t need a second one? That does not seem like me, but I DID donate a lot of clothes. I went back and forth with this line of thinking until finally I recruited my older son to come with me to the shed to look in the unlooked-in boxes and to reach where I couldn’t.

Well, I was correct. They were not in with the gardening implements or tools and neither, sadly, were the bookmarks. But as my son peered around the corner, he said “Hey, there is a bag of sweaters on the floor!” and lo, there it was, on the absolutely filthy shed floor, my bag of sweaters. How or why it was there no one can say, and I think it is safe to say that this mystery will never be solved, but I was thrilled. At that moment, the moment my son reached over a box to grab the sweaters, I looked up and there, scurrying up the shelving unit not three feet away from my face, was a mouse.

You know how I feel about mice residing in places that I also reside. I think I entered a fugue state.

Technically I know I do not reside in the shed that houses tools and tractors. Technically I know that on a two-acre property there are going to be mice in a shed that houses tools and tractors. But this was three feet from my face and, my son casually noted, there was a hole in the sweater bag.

It is very possible that the hole was the result of the material ripping while it was somehow dumped onto the floor of the shed. Maybe it was even probable. However, given the circumstances, my soul briefly left my body and my body left the shed.

I had my son take each sweater out individually and shake it vigorously, then flatten it on the grass. We, or, rather, he then checked all the pockets and shook them out again. When we were satisfied there were no stowaways, I immediately threw all the sweaters into the washing machine, hoping to god that this wouldn’t result in my discovery of any mouse corpses, and if there was, I planned to ask my mother-in-law to deal with them. Dead animals faze her not in the slightest, and in fact she had just told me a story about how she personally dealt with a fawn corpse in her yard not all that many years ago. Happily, her services were not needed.

Finding the sweaters made me think that maybe something similar happened to the bookmarks. After all, if an entire large bag of sweaters could somehow end up on the floor of the shed, then anything could happen. We scoured the shed, I opened and went through all the tool and garden implement boxes again, I even checked each and every suitcase on my husband’s suggestion (Him: maybe you put them in one of the outer pockets? Me: OMG MAYBE! *five minutes later, silent and dejected*).

Well. It’s really time for me to move on. After all, people have lost houses very close to me, me losing a bag of bookmarks feels like Embarrassingly Small Potatoes. I’m not even sure that in the grand scheme of things, they could even be considered potatoes. It’s more like losing a single grain of sand on the beach. In fact, I feel a bit ashamed that I have been sad about such a thing when there is so much tragic loss around here. Perspective, it’s a thing.

Weekly Reading

Bel Canto. Late to the party but WOW, did I love this book about a hostage taking gone…right? This is an absolutely beautiful story about hostages and their captors, and how they ended up creating a world of beauty and wonder together, how they went on living their lives as a little community. It is so subtly hilarious and the writing is witty and gorgeous; the characters are all so incredibly loveable and fun. There is the translator who is used by everyone and who learned Swedish from watching subtitled films and so his knowledge of the country is “somewhat dark.” There is the opera singer who everyone is in love with, the country’s Vice President in whose house the hostage taking takes place, and so he takes on the role of host looking after his houseguests. There is the French diplomat who becomes the house cook, the long-suffering General whose shingles keeps flaring up, the Japanese businessman for whom the original party was thrown for and who is an opera and chess aficionado, and the man from the Red Cross who is in charge of the negotiations. This book is incredibly moving and the end, while it should be obvious what happens, was such a shock to me. Back in April 2020, on one of my many daily walks (what else did we do then?), I ran into a neighbourhood acquaintance and she mentioned this as her favourite book. I put it on my list, but the libraries were closed, and so I forgot about it. I am SO glad I read this, it’s absolutely an incredible piece of writing.

And Then There Were None. Murder mystery isn’t my usual genre but my son just read this and insisted I give it a try – and he was right! Ten people are invited to an island, and each one disappears one by one. It’s so good and it kept me guessing until the very end!

My Name Is Lucy Barton. God, I love this book. This is the fourth time I’ve read this and every time I read it I am moved anew. I find as I get older I understand it in different ways. What a gorgeous, moving, complicated book about love and life. It’s so powerful and yet simple. I received Lucy By The Sea for Christmas and have decided to read all the Lucy books again, before starting the newest. What a pleasure to do so. After all, I don’t have a library card yet – I was hoping to try last week with two pieces of mail and my passport, and if that’s not enough, I don’t know what, but with the fires I decided to stay home – and so I’m going back and rereading my shelf.

I hope things settle down this week; even without the fire situation things are a little bit crazy around here. More on that to come, and in the meantime, take care of yourselves. xo

Five For Friday: The Faces, Friends, Fire, and Family Edition

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  • Nobody Panic. It was so fun to read everyone’s responses to the dishwashing, face washing, cookbook post. The very next day, the Nobody Panic podcast released an episode called How To Wash Your Face, which made me wonder – do they read this blog? No. But it was a fun coincidence anyway. Not to completely spoil the episode, but the theme was “Should you do this too? I don’t know, I don’t know your face! We all have different faces!” which is just how I feel! All our different precious faces require different methods of washing!
  • Girls, Girls, Girls. Last Saturday my sweet friend Sammi (HI SAMMI) hosted a girl’s night, and she included both me and another woman who had also just moved here four weeks ago. Everyone was so lovely and I met so many fun women, including someone who also lives on a large piece of property which includes her in-laws’ home. MY PEOPLE. Second only to the laughs and great company was the food: it was an appetizer-and-margarita night, which is a winning combination for me. I love making a dinner out of appetizers; to quote Juliet Litman, my ideal way of dining is Dips and Desserts. We all brought something and everything was so delicious; one woman brought bruschetta made exclusively from her garden items, which made me so excited to start my own garden next year. I am a Girl Who Needs Girls, and so it was so wonderful to be included into the circle. It reminded me of something I heard recently about Victoria Beckham, who taught her daughter that her number one job at school was to notice if there was someone alone in the playground, and then be friendly with that person. I feel like I am the girl alone on the playground, and Sammi is Victoria Beckham’s daughter, is what I’m saying.
  • Be Our Guest, Be Our Guest. We had our first houseguest this week, and it was my brother. If you know, you know. Because our old house was small and didn’t have a room for guests, we have actually never had houseguests before, so this was really fun. It was a super hot week – Tuesday was 39 degrees! – and sadly yesterday a huge fire broke out on the west side of the lake. We could see the flames from our house, which was frankly terrifying. My brother had left by that time, which was good because he would have been going through it; as of this morning I think the people who live out on that side – it’s not hugely populated, but there are people – are safe. There is some structural damage, but as of right now it’s not extensive.
The sole upside to smoky skies: sunsets.
  • Cross Canada Tour. Speaking of guests (I have looked at the word guest too many times and now it looks strange to me. Guest guest guest.) I will be guest-posting over at Elisabeth’s blog (HI ELISABETH)! Do you know Elisabeth? She and I have been friends since 2021, and I credit San (HI SAN) and her Secret Santa Mug Swap for introducing us. I think we were the only Canadians, so we got paired up and I couldn’t be happier to know her! Elisabeth is an organizational and thrifting QUEEN who should also be working for Tourism Nova Scotia, because her photos of her home province make everyone who sees them want to book a trip immediately. I am not sure when my guest post will be there – I have to write it first – but I haven’t guest-posted since probably 2010 SO THIS IS EXCITING.
  • I’ve Got The Key, I’ve Got The Secret. After twenty-three years of mail delivery to my door, I am getting used to having a community mailbox. The first few weeks I was here I had to borrow my mother-in-law’s mail key to access it, as in addition to sharing two acres, we share a mailbox. This should not have been a big deal, but it felt like a big deal; I would text her to see if I could borrow the key, which of course I could, then I would go to her house, and she’d have to get the key from its place in her car, and it simply felt like a lot to just get the mail. However, by the miracle that is Canadian Tire’s key cutting service, our house now has not one but two mail keys, and anyone can get the mail at any time. The timing for this was fortuitous as my dear, longtime friend Elise (HI ELISE) sent me an enormous care package with so many lovely things in it including chocolate goodies, and I was able to speed walk to the mailbox to get them before they melted. Did I mention it was 39 degrees? As a side note, Elise sent Cuban lunches, which I haven’t had in an AGE and I was so excited to get! Among SO MANY generous things, she also sent a bookmark, and my heart felt like the Grinch’s when it grew three sizes, seeing it.

We have been absolute social butterflies this week, and it looks like more of the same for the weekend! I love it! I was so worried about feeling lonely and isolated, moving here, but between new friends and old friends and long-distance friends sending love and even visiting (HI JANET), between family visits that have happened and family visits that will HOPEFULLY be happening NEXT MONTH (HI MOM) I am so happy and content. I hope you all have a wonderful, heart-filling weekend. xo

Same But Different

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Very often, I think about all of us in the world, how we are all going about our lives in ways that are both the same and vastly different. Isn’t it incredible, in this big small world, that we are all bustling along, working away, caring for ourselves and our families and our pets, sneaking in bursts of joy in the day, and it’s all the same but also different?

I try not to be ethnocentric, or, more accurately, Nicolecentric, but sometimes I am surprised to discover that friends do boring, everyday things so very differently than I. It’s not like I think my methods are better or worse than anyone else’s, but they are different, I am discovering. I think sometimes there can be moral value judgement placed on how women do things – how often we do laundry, how often do we clean the bathroom, what are we making for dinner – but I’m not interested in any of that. One thing is as good as another, in my books. All the same, I wanted to talk about things I have noticed lately that we all do, but in different ways.

By The Book

My husband asked why I even have cookbooks because I never use them, or if I do use them, it is to wildly change the recipe. This is an exaggeration but only a little one; I don’t think there is any recipe I use regularly that I have not adapted or changed in some way. I’m like the irritating people who used to write in when I was working at YMC, who would say ridiculous things like: I made the chickpea dish you posted but I didn’t have chickpeas so I subbed ground beef, and I didn’t have lemon for the sauce so I used Worcestershire, and instead of parsley I used lettuce. It was terrible, I give zero stars to this recipe. Although, I’m not exactly like that, I like all the dishes I make, no notes. Even recipes for baked goods get the Nicole treatment – shave off some sugar, double the vanilla, let’s add chocolate chips! – and so all my cookbooks have my writing all over them, noting changes. I guess I think of cookbooks as aspirational jumping-off points, rather than, you know, something to use to make dinner.

Before we moved, I committed the cardinal sin of buying something new and extra to pack – two new cookbooks. I think I was having some kind of emotional crisis. My thinking was along the lines that we were going to be in a new house, in a new province, living a new life, with a half empty nest, and it was time to shake up the weekly meal plan. There seemed no need to have a pita pizza night when it would be just me and my husband, and there was no need to make extra pita pizzas for school lunches. So I bought two cookbooks and one of them sounded so promising, called Mandy’s Gourmet Salads. Mandy’s is, apparently, a famous salad and bowl place in Montreal, and I thought, what could be better? Well. This is the most ridiculous cookbook I have ever seen. Each recipe refers to at least one, but usually more, additional recipe on a different page, and then THAT recipe refers to another recipe. As an example, I wanted to make a peanut Thai noodle dish, and the recipe referred to another page for a spicy tofu recipe, and to another page for the chili lime dressing. When I got to the dressing page, the first item in the chili lime dressing recipe referred to ANOTHER recipe as the base for that dressing, and then THAT base recipe referred to another recipe for sesame syrup reduction, at which point I slammed the book shut and decided just to Free Bird it, deeply regretting wasting money on a cookbook when I was just going to make something up anyway. And this bird you cannot change.

Oh, I’m Dishwashing My Life Away

Someone recently asked me, when I mentioned washing dishes for the fifth time in a day, why I didn’t just get a dishwasher. I do indeed have a dishwasher and I do indeed use the dishwasher, but only for plates, silverware, and glassware, which is honestly only a small percentage of the items that need to be washed in the kitchen each day. I hand wash pots, pans, the food processor, the Vitamix, mixing bowls, and all the related cooking accoutrements. I suppose I could put some of those in the dishwasher, but they all take up a lot of room which would necessitate running the dishwasher several times a day, which seems wasteful.

When we were in planning stages of the house, the designer strongly recommended a large single sink to my husband, who relayed this information to me, was clearly not prepared for my outsized, passionate feelings about a double sink. He may have physically backed up slightly. I need a double sink to survive, is what I am saying, which is why Diane’s (HI DIANE) recent post about her dishwasher breaking, and her stopper-less single sink, gave me secondhand dishwashing anxiety. I have a very specific way of washing dishes: I fill the left sink with hot soapy water, and use the right sink to rinse out dishes BEFORE they go into the hot soapy water, because it harshes my kitchen mellow to have food particles or grease in the dishwater. I like clean dish water, what can I say. If I’m really in the zone I can rinse the washed-and-soapy dishes with hot running water, and allow that hot running water to also rinse the dirty dishes in the right sink, which feels like a virtuous water conservation project. If a pot is really gross, I will use a scrubber and the rinse water to clean it out BEFORE it goes into the hot soapy water. All the clean dishes get piled up on the dish rack and there they stay until they are dry, or dry enough, to put away. Growing up, my job was always to dry dishes, and there is not a household job I loathe more than that, no, not even scrubbing toilets; as god is my witness I shall never dry dishes again. Well, sometimes I do if I’m desperate, and when the kids clean the kitchen after dinner one of them will dry dishes, to prevent the inevitable tumbling down of the tower of dishes piled in the rack. They do not seem to have my dish-drying aversion.

This is controversial, but I never put a plate in the dishwasher without rinsing it first. I pile all the plates and cutlery into the dirty dishwater, after pots and pans are washed, and give each item a quick swipe with the scrub brush before loading the dishwasher. “So, you wash the dishes BEFORE they go into the dishwasher?” my mother asked me with her eyebrows in her hairline. No, I rinse them; if I washed them I would use the clean dishwater. My friend Dom (HI DOM) straight up told me that this methodology is a) insane and b) would, over time, result in a subpar performance by my dishwasher. Nevertheless, I am who I am and I shall not be deterred.

Girl, Wash Your Face

Speaking of washing things, if we were playing Never Have I Ever, I would say used a washcloth to wash my face. I use my hands, and so does my entire family; not to be insular, but I never really thought about it any other way until I read this by Suzanne (HI SUZANNE) and this by Engie (HI ENGIE) and realized that a large percentage of people are Team Washcloth. I have just never considered a washcloth as an option, and I probably never will, because the way I wash my face works just fine for me. A washcloth seems too rough for my skin and always has, although that doesn’t explain my early-teen usage of St Ives Apricot Scrub. I think that product could remove rust from a wheel well.

When I admitted that, while I own a couple of washcloths, they are never used for their intended purpose, I felt kind of exotic, fielding questions about washing my face with my hands, like I just landed here from Mars and humans were wondering how Martians perform their daily ablutions. Are you wondering how, exactly I wash my face? No? Are you thinking Nicole, this is the weirdest and most boring topic you have ever written about, and I just read a thousand words about how you wash dishes and hate cookbooks, so that is saying something? Well, we didn’t come this far just to get this far, people. Strap in, friends, we are going for a wild ride.

Here are the necessary items that guarantee success: a fresh hand towel for patting the old visage dry post-washing, Dove bar soap, Neutrogena cleanser.

Also necessary: tying back my hair and, when applicable, pushing up sleeves. No one wants to go to bed with wet jammie wrists, not that this is a concern with summer jammies.

First step: wet hands, work up a small lather with the Dove bar, and then splash the soapy water on the face, massaging gently to loosen the layers of makeup and sunscreen from the day, paying special attention to the eyes. I gently rub my eyelashes until I no longer feel mascara, but instead look like a crazed raccoon.

Next step: rinse hands and then work a dollop of Neutrogena cleanser into a lather, apply to face, massaging gently for a minute or so.

Last step: rinse, and then pat dry with the clean towel. I don’t like to put my face into a used towel, so I have many hand towels that I have under the sink for single use, like the princess that I am. This can also be used to wipe up any errant water sprays if need be.

Now I’m ready for my many serums and night creams!

Weekly Reading

Before I get into what I did read this week, I am going to tell you about a DNF. It is very rare for me not to finish a book, but the Menopause Reset made it onto the short list. How or why this ended up on my Kobo, I know not; maybe someone recommended it, maybe the Kobo algorithm recommended it, maybe I heard the author on a podcast and liked her, who can say. Well. The very first sentence is something like “Are you tired of not being able to lose weight?” and I thought, NO. Not only am I not interested, I am not even interested in reading even tangentially about weight loss. But I pushed through the first two chapters before abandoning ship. It was not well written, for one thing, although I have read worse-written books. The first two chapters talked about how great the author’s life was until menopause hit, and then there were SO MANY HOT FLASHES, YOU GUYS. Then she outlined how she took charge of her menopause, and mainly, it seems, that was accomplished through the keto diet, intermittent fasting, and detoxing. Again, none of these things are of interest to me but I may have still read it, had she not revealed that she did not believe in medication utilization for depression and anxiety. I myself do not suffer depression nor anxiety, but I have friends who do and medication literally saved their lives. Listen, I will grudgingly tolerate this attitude from Tom Cruise, because Maverick, but I will not read this kind of bullshit from another woman. DEE EN EFF.

A Living Remedy. This is a memoir about a woman losing both of her parents; I had also read her memoir about being adopted and the search for her birth parents, and I will say that this book was a much more compelling read. She discusses her father’s death from complications from untreated diabetes, and what stood out to me is the absolute disaster that it is for people without health insurance to become sick in the United States. I am no Smug Canadian here, because our health care system is far from perfect (ask me about finding a new doctor! Or wait lists!) but I think the absolute last thing a sick person should be doing is worrying about costs of treatment and if those costs are going to push a person into bankruptcy, which is exactly what happened in this book. Her working poor parents had no health insurance, and her dad became sicker and sicker, until he went to a doctor and discovered he lost 90% of his kidney function. His treatment, plus her mother’s bills from cancer treatment, meant that they had to declare bankruptcy. For some reason, they didn’t qualify for Medicare or disability insurance either. I think it is an absolute travesty. Recently I listened to the Hooked on Life podcast where one of their guests discussed his own journey with cancer and said that what is never talked about is the crippling depression that happens AFTER treatment; this man had lost his home, his job, everything. Anyway, this book is about more than just that, it also shows a beautiful and loving relationship between the author and her mother. Her mother died of cancer during the early part of the pandemic; the author could not be with her mother when she passed, and it made me so sad to remember that very terrible time. So many deaths that would have been so lonely. This book is definitely worth a read but, clearly, heavy reading material. 

If you, like me, are also fascinated by the myriad ways we experience the boring and mundane minutia of life, feel free to share! Are you Team Washcloth or Team Hands? Do you also have weird and absolutely rigid ways of doing the dishes? Do you hate drying them? How do you feel about recipes? Tell me everything. xo

Acclimatizing

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Are You Feeling Hot! Hot! Hot!

Since I got here, it has been one beautiful day after another; summer here is absolutely gorgeous. If I had even one day like this in Calgary – warm and sunny, windless and without storms – I would be frantically spending every possible second outside, carpe diem, not wanting to waste a beautiful day. Weather there is always so volatile – one of my girlfriends texted me last week to say it was 13 degrees and pouring rain – so I’m ever so grateful to be living in a place where I can predict what the day will bring. Summer weather in the summer, what a novel concept!

I was a bit concerned, moving here, how Rex would do in the heat. He’s definitely a cold-weather dog, and I was worried that the temperatures would be too hot for him, but so far it has not been a problem. I walk him at 8:00 at the latest, and our walking route is a beautiful trail that is almost entirely shaded. It winds along a creek, which he enjoys drinking from and also is the reason his white paws are completely grubby all the time now. Attached to this path is an offleash park, which is also shaded and has water taps, bowls, and kiddie pools. It also had, one day, Rex’s doppelgänger.

As an aside, one of the first days I was at the offleash a very attractive young man was chatting with me and told me not to worry about the water in the bowls, he had just filled them, adding, ominously, You know, I don’t trust the old water, because of that woman. Wait, what woman? I told him I just moved here and he explained that there was a woman who would came to dog parks, with no dog, and poisoned the water in the bowls. Several dogs got sick and one actually DIED. I listened to this story with wide, horrified eyes, and was reminded of my days at the playground, how the young mothers would warily eye men without children, sitting on the benches. In any case, now that Rex has discovered the giant water bowl that is in the creek, he is completely uninterested in the water at the offleash.

I do love our morning walk route, but I have had to adjust to driving to get to the trail, rather than just strolling out the door, as I was used to doing. The first morning I was here I decided I WOULD walk to the trail; it was only about two kilometres, and I had used it as a running route before, so I was sure it would be just fine. Well. I had grossly misjudged how stressful it would be to walk down a busy road with no sidewalks, only a bike lane, with an enormous and excited dog bounding around, while cars zipped past. It took all my strength to keep the leash short and Rex on the inside, which backfired completely when he excitedly discovered not only a dead raccoon, but several squashed birds, at which point my soul briefly left my body. Suddenly, it didn’t seem like driving five minutes was such a hardship to be avoided.

International Costco Woman of Mystery

I have been slowly getting used to the grocery stores here. Sure, Superstore is Superstore, and Costco is Costco, but there are differences from what I’m used to. I think the biggest difference is that because Kelowna is just over a tenth of the size of Calgary, there is only one of each of those stores, and hence they are very busy. I made the mistake of going to Costco on a day that was a bit cooler and overcast – but still, temperature-wise, would have been considered a hot day in Calgary – and it was INSANE. It reminded me of the Costco in Maui, and just writing that makes me feel like I am a fancy world-Costco-traveller. Nicole: The International Costco Woman of Mystery could be the name of my memoir. Anyway, the layout was the same as the one in Maui and opposite of that in Calgary, which made it tricky to find everything on my list, and also it was so busy as to be almost impossible to maneuver through the aisles. It was literal bumper-to-bumper cart traffic. Perhaps it will be easier when tourist season is over.

The biggest difference for me, grocery-wise, is Superstore. It’s not just the layout, it’s the actual products that are available. Calgary in general and the part of the city in which I lived in particular is much more multicultural than here, and so the international foods aisle was always a cornucopia of fun and interesting items. Here, this is not the case. A quarter of the international aisle is filled with British products, like spotted dick, which I am not in the market for, culinary or otherwise, and the selection of Asian, Indian, and African items is pretty limited. I’m finding it hard to find noodles I like, is what I’m saying.

Hi Neighbourino

Probably the largest adjustment I have had to make has to do with my next-door neighbour. Before I get into that, a little context: my husband grew up on his family-owned vineyard, and about twenty years ago his family sold it and the attached winery, keeping two acres of it. The house in which we are living was originally his grandparents’; we added a second floor to it and took the existing house down to the studs, renovating it completely. It is such an incredibly fortunate thing to be able to live in a beautiful new house on a vineyard, overlooking the lake and the city. Every morning I wake up and look out the windows and feel so very lucky.

There is one thing that I feel you should know, and I’m mentioning it in a very casual, value-neutral way, and that is that there is another house on this two acre property, and that house belongs to my mother-in-law. While you absorb that information, I will hasten to assure you that my mother-in-law and I have a good relationship, albeit one that has been cultivated long-distance over the past twenty-five years. She is not one of those women who think that No One Is Good Enough For Her Precious Son; in fact, she thinks everything I do and every decision I make is Just Wonderful, Dear, which is lovely and, I think, rare. She is not a person who insists on having every meal together; in fact, I can’t even remember the last time we had a dinner together, it might have been Thanksgiving 2020.

But still, living next door is a lot different from twice-or-thrice annual visits, and so this is an adjustment to be sure, mostly a mental one. My main concern is maintaining boundaries and protecting personal privacy, for both of us, and mostly it’s been fine. We had an open and honest conversation about this prior to the move, which was INCREDIBLY difficult for me, because I don’t know how you grew up in the 80s and 90s, but open and honest conversation was not part of the story for me. In any case, there have been a few gentle bumps, but mostly it’s been fairly smooth sailing.

Bye Bye Birdie

In eighteen days, my older son is moving on campus for his first year at university. He’s so excited, and I’m so excited for him, and also, landslide. The university is close to us, so this feels like a very soft landing, but it’s still going to be a big change. In the meantime, I’m really cherishing having four faces at the dinner table. When he was working shift work this past year, I found myself thinking that the nights he was home for dinner was a real treat; this past month I feel spoiled having both the boys here all the time. What I am going to say is nothing new or original or earth-shattering, but I just love my boys so much; I am so proud of them both and I think they are incredible people, and I can hardly believe my luck that the universe gave them to me. It’s been so wonderful having them both here this summer, and of course it’s going to change very soon, and, like everything else, I will adjust to the changes. All you who have been through this know what it is.

I’m going to miss my son’s bartending skills; check out this mango margarita!

Weekly Reading

First of all, thank you all for your very kind comments of understanding and stories of hope, with regards to Bookmarkgate. So far they have not been recovered, but there are some boxes with garage items and gardening implements that I have not yet gone through, and although I’m not very hopeful, I’m not COMPLETELY hopeless. It’s more like 90% hopeless, as opposed to 100% before your lovely comments. We hosted our first dinner party this weekend and my sweet friend Sammi (HI SAMMI) brought me bookmarks as a housewarming, to “tide me over until the others were found.” I have such lovely friends!

Prep. When I was a kid I was obsessed with the idea of boarding school. It just seemed so fun and cool. Is it just me or does everyone think this? Anyway, this book is a very realistic portrait of a girl from Indiana who goes to a New England boarding school on scholarship; it shows her evolution from freshman to senior, and I really liked it. It showed an insular and privileged world, with all the angst of a teen in the 90s. I thought it was such a true picture of what it was to be a teen at that time, albeit in a very different life than the one I had.

Here we are at the end of a long weekend, and I hope yours was great. Have a lovely week, everyone! xo

Books, Books, Books: Moving Reading 2023

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I have to tell you that I had a tiny bit of a breakdown this week. Well, maybe more than tiny, and it was book-related. The first thing that happened is that I discovered it will be a couple of months before I can get a library card here, as I do not yet have official documentation for my new address. I was more upset than one should be to discover this, possibly due to that time of the month looming, possibly due to the comedown from months of stress, possibly due to everything being new and different. The librarian told me she couldn’t give me a card, and I was blinking back tears about it all day.

But you know me, I rallied, thinking that at least I held onto my CPL account on my Libby app, so I can get e-books, and I have hundreds of books on the shelves in my new spare room:

I cheerfully thought, well, I’ll take this opportunity to read my new copy of Lucy By The Sea, and why not reread the whole series while I’m at it? Maybe I’ll reread all of Jane Austen, in order of publication? I haven’t read my favourite Diary of a Provincial Lady for a while! Maybe I’ll read that. I was feeling very pleased with this idea, and my husband had just finished moving some furniture around in the downstairs gaming area, so I was able to access the cupboard on the TV stand. I had put a large ziploc bag full of my bookmarks in that cupboard before moving; when I opened it I made the sad discovery that the other things that were in that cupboard were still there, but my bookmarks were gone. A search of the house and all other pieces of furniture, including the garbage, was undertaken, all for naught. Everything is unpacked and the bookmarks are not here.

At this point, you’re probably thinking who cares about bookmarks? But while I have become unsentimental about many things, my bookmarks were not among them. I had handmade bookmarks from a friend’s daughter, and I would swap them out seasonally and thematically – I just got teary eyed again, thinking what am I going to do for Tiny Secret Festive Season when I don’t have my Christmas bookmarks – I had bookmarks created by and gifted to me by my yoga students as a memory of them, I had bookmarks from my days as the Book Fair Lady, and, saddest of all, I had bookmarks made by my children with markers and drawings on them. To say that I was upset by the loss of this bag is a vast understatement. I cried for hours. I cried so hard my stomach started to feel nauseous. I cried so much that my whole body ached and I felt like I had a terrible hangover.

Well. There’s no solution to this problem, except trying to practice non-attachment. Things are just things, but this is a sad thing, and in the meantime, let’s cheer ourselves up by talking about the books that got me through the week before the move up until yesterday. Let’s put the R in REM Y REM, am I right?

Moving Reading

The Sun and Her Flowers. There are some really beautiful and uplifting poems in this collection, but I think I would have liked this much more had I read it as a younger woman. Much of it deals with healing from bad relationships, and becoming stronger. It’s not my stage of life but still, I enjoy this very talented young poet.

The Story of Us. This is a sweet and very big hearted book about a Filipino woman coming to Canada as a nanny, but eventually caring for an elderly trans woman who is an Alzheimer’s patient. It’s all about family – biological and chosen – and understanding one another. The author is Canadian, which I love, and the novel’s pony of view is from that of the caregiver’s unborn child, which is very original. Some of the dialogue and prose is a bit stilted and is clearly written to make a statement and to promote the author’s agenda, which leaves me mixed. On the one hand, it is cool in that I completely support her agenda and love that books are written in a normalizing way about queer and transgender people, but from a literary standpoint, it is not my favourite. Despite that I enjoyed this very much, and found the characters to be so warm and lovely and engaging, and the relationship that developed through caregiver and patient to be incredibly heartwarming.

Romantic Comedy. Before I tell you how I loved this delightful, fun, and witty romance, a confession. I almost didn’t read this. There has been a lot of buzz around it, but I saw the author’s name and thought no thank you. In case you hadn’t noticed, at least 95% of the books I read are by female authors; it’s not that I NEVER read a male author or NEVER enjoy a male author, but it’s rare and infrequent. What can I say, I like the ladies. This is particularly true for fiction. But then I was in the library and I saw it on the New and Notable shelf; I flipped it over and saw the author’s picture – she’s a woman! Joke’s on me. Anyway, you know how you will sometimes see gorgeous movie or music star women with kind of shlubby guys (i.e., Johansson and Jost) but you do not ever see the gender flip of that? That is what this book is about. A SNL-style writer helps a male pop star with his sketches for the show, and inadvertently insults him by insinuating he would only hook up with models fifteen years his junior. They reconnect via email during the summer of 2020, and I am here for it. It’s really funny and sweet, and has some great messaging in it; the writing is top-notch and it’s just such a great romance novel! It turns out I am also here for a good pandemic side-story if it’s done well. The details about starting a relationship during the early stages of the pandemic, and what life was like (DOOMSCROLLING 4EVER) were spot on.

The Myth of Normal. Four years ago I read When The Body Says No by this author, and it was just fascinating to me, the connection between the mind and the body, the idea that mental and emotional trauma could manifest as physical illness. This book is much more of the same, delving into chronic illness as well as addiction, and the intergenerational causes of such things. It skates a very tricky line; it’s hard to write about how stress, personality traits, and traumatic or semi-traumatic experiences can lead to chronic illness without making it sound victim blaming, but the author (mostly) manages to do that. He writes with a lot of compassion about how our personalities can be shaped by adverse experiences and societal pressures, which can lead to illness or pain. It’s a fascinating book BUT warning, for anyone going through, say, a STRESSFUL PERIOD LIKE MOVING, it can be a wee bit triggering. Or, you know, if your husband has been in an incredibly stressful job for five and a half years and has multiple health issues. Also? If you are a parent, I would highly recommend skipping the chapters on parenting and how it shapes our children UNLESS you want to be haunted by the time you were so exhausted you left the baby to cry it out for a while to see if they’d fall asleep and then they DID, which apparently means the baby gave up and will be searching their whole life for someone to soothe and comfort them. Also, if you didn’t feed them on demand. Or didn’t breastfeed until they weaned themselves. Sure, societal pressures could be at play but probably you have destroyed their sense of autonomy and self-worth forever. Pardon me while I go do some breathing exercises. I kid, I kid. If you are interested in this subject, this is a very comprehensive, compassionate, and fascinating book just, maybe read with a grain of salt? Or a shaker full?

The Urgent Life. I heard this author on a podcast and I was so taken by her that I had to read her book. Um. Well? I had to check several times to see if this was actually the same person, because the book was not at all what I thought it was. I’m not saying it’s not good – it’s well-written and very interesting – but it wasn’t at all what I thought it would be about. It is a memoir about her husband dying, which I knew happened, but what I didn’t know is that they had been separated for four years at that point, they had lost a baby, and her father, a hard-core patriarch, moved in with them – while married – into their tiny New York apartment not once, but twice. Everyone in this book sounds pretty unlikeable, except for the (spoiler alert) new girlfriend who, at the end of the book, gets totally shafted. So, I don’t know what else to say. If you’re reading this, go in with different expectations than I did, I guess?

Love and Trouble. I thought I would love this. A book of essays by a forty-something woman looking back on her youth? Sign me up! But the execution and theme were so dull and repetitive, and her stories of her hyper-sexualized, wayward youth and mountains of poor decisions did not make for good reading. A couple of the essays I thought were okay, but that’s about it.

You Think It, I’ll Say It. After a slumpish couple of books, I was so happy to read this gem! You know I love a short story, and these are really great – complicated, unreliable narrators, variety of stories and settings. I’m so glad I started reading this talented author! This was so good!

Violeta. This book is the history of Chile from 1920-2020, as told by one woman. She was born in the Spanish flu epidemic of 1920, and died in the early days of the COVID pandemic of 2020. This is a translation, which might explain the awkward and stilted dialogue. It’s a very long book that drags a lot, but I’m still glad I read it as I knew very little about Chile, and I like seeing history through a human lens. Still. Long. Draggy. Be warned! This is the only book ever that I had expire on my Kobo, and I had to wait for it to come available again to finish it, which I somewhat toyed with NOT doing. It could be the move, but it was a hard one for me to get through.

Glow In The F*cking Dark. You know how I feel about the asterisk in f*cking. YOU KNOW HOW I FEEL ABOUT IT! Just SAY it or don’t, but don’t ADD THE ASTERISK! So, you know there must be a reason I overstepped my deep, deep dislike for the fuck asterisk – it’s similar to my dislike of male authors, it has to be a really good reason that I’ll read a male author, like maybe he’s David Sedaris or something – and that reason is twofold. One, I really enjoyed this woman’s first book Buy Yourself The F*cking Lilies (I KNOW), and two, I heard her speak on a podcast and discovered that her working title was simply Glow In The Dark, no F*cking involved, but her agent insisted, to the author’s dismay, that it was her “brand.” I get this. Anyway, all that said, I really did enjoy this book that is a sequel to her re-parenting Lilies book; similarly it’s a memoir mixed with self-help, and it’s very lovely and uplifting with a lot of practical advice. I also love that her epigraph was a quote from Rumi that I love: “We are stars wrapped in skin. The light you are seeking has always been within.” I love that, and that’s the theme of the book – you are a star – A FUCKING STAR, I SAID IT, NO ASTERISK – and as such, you should glow and light the way for others.

There, I’m all caught up! My boys keep telling me my bookmarks will turn up, and I want to believe this, but how is it possible when we have unpacked everything and searched everywhere? On that note, it’s time for me to put the M and Y into REM Y REM, and to wish you all a wonderful long weekend (it is the long weekend, isn’t it? Time has lost its meaning even more than before.) xo

Gnome Sweet Gnome

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In the last six weeks or so, I have listened to approximately one million podcasts, as I have been packing and cleaning and unpacking and DRIVING. It’s gotten to the point where I am wondering if I am in an unhealthy parasocial relationship with the hosts of my favourite ones, because I am relating to them so much. Several weeks ago, Kim from Everything Is Fine spoke about her recent move between Brooklyn apartments, and she said you just have to accept that everything is just going to suck for a while, and then one day you’ll feel like this is home, and when she said that, my ears perked up. I think at the time I was just in the beginning of the process, and those words stuck with me. It’s just going to suck for a while! And then it will feel like home!

The day the movers came – ten days ago now, already – was 37 degrees, RIP the movers and the guys, who were helping. It was such a busy and crazy day, and at the end of it, the guys were having a beer with the movers on the deck. I declined as I really just wanted to get the kitchen at least semi-unpacked, as it looked like this at the time:

My friend Tara (HI TARA) had warned me about what would happen, using the moving company to pack our things. She said you would find something packed super well and unwind all the packing paper, and it would be, like, a single pencil. I did not find any single pencils wrapped as such, but many times I did unwind enormous swaths of packing paper to reveal a single shot glass. Well, it was worth it since nothing was broken, but there was a lot of paper to be recycled.

Anyway, the guys were out having a beer and I was unpacking and arranging shot glasses and other kitchen-related items in the cupboards, when I saw the moving van drive away. At that point my sons burst into the house to tell me that I was desperately needed for One Last Box. By then, I had politely directed people where to put random boxes and pieces of furniture for HOURS, the doors were naturally opened the whole time and so the air conditioning was negated by the 37 degree heat, I had a pile of paper up to my knees JUST from shot glasses, and I was starving and wondering how to cobble together a dinner in such a mess. I did NOT want to go on the deck to make a decision about One Last Box, but the boys were laughing and smiling, and they just seemed so excited, and I didn’t want to be Bitchy Mom with everything going on. Also, I had just read the parenting chapters in Gabor Mate’s book The Myth of Normal, which I do not recommend you do, unless you want to feel like you have done everything wrong and have ruined your children for life. The rest of the book is good, just, maybe skip that part? Anyway, I put down my shot glass and followed them out on the deck, where they had an exacto knife for opening a wide, narrow box that was labeled “Gnomes.”

I don’t yet have a garden to call my own, so the gnomes have been on the deck, and have been moved around magically during the night. Here they are in a conga line:

It reminds me of when I first got Salvadore and it was too wintry for him to be outside, and his position in the house would change every day, like a garden version of Elf on a Shelf.

Even though I have become increasingly unsentimental about My Things, there are a few things that really have made Our House feel like Our Home, and I will say that gnomes are a huge part of it. I haven’t mentioned Julio and Jorge, who are plant pot gnomes acquired at the same time as Gustaf, but they are adorable little things. I do not have plant pots yet for this house, and so right now they are hanging out with the wooden flower I bought 24 years ago from IKEA to decorate our very first apartment, a tiny place 30 floors up in downtown Calgary.

Gaston the kitchen gnome is presiding over the kitchen.

Of course the Girls are enjoying their new spots in the kitchen as well.

The yoga frogs – and bunnies – have rounded out my kitchen decor nicely, which is making it feel very homey.

We are still in the process of hanging up the artwork, a process that will probably take a few weeks to figure out where things will look best, but my husband immediately put up my Desiderata beside my piano, which was the finishing touch on Things That Are Important To Me.

Speaking of things that are important to me, and circling back to podcasts, the incredible Alie Ward of Ologies said that her daily practice for mental, physical, and emotional health is represented by the mnemonic REM REM. The first REM stands for Reading, Exercise, and Meditation, and the second REM refers simply to sleep. I heard this and it cemented my parasocial relationship with her; it was all I could do not to send an email saying Me too, meeeee toooooo, we are besties now! In order to be at my best, every day I need to read, exercise, and meditate – I include yoga in the meditation part or, OR, I could escribo en espanol and say REM Y REM – and to get between seven and seven and a half hours of sleep. I have been squeezing in all of those things every day over the past little while, even whilst in Work Camp Mode. Sure, sometimes it’s just a little of each, and some days I did have less sleep than optimal, but for the most part I have adhered to this.

Now that all the major work has been done, I was able to spend the weekend in a more pleasurable way than being on my feet for fourteen hours and going through insane amounts of cleaning products. Saturday morning my older son and I went exploring on our bikes and it was so much fun. We rode up a grinder of a hill through the orchards, and then rode an absolutely terrifying – for me, not for him – downhill with no shoulder or bike lane, a curving, huge, steep hill; we rode down through the sun-baked creek valley and along the creek until we hit Lakeshore Road, and then circled back up a less-strenuous, but it was at the end of our ride so it FELT strenuous, hill home. I never rode my bike in Calgary as I was terrified of traffic, but there are bike lanes everywhere here – except, of course, on the giant scary hill – and I look forward to doing much more of it in the weeks and months to come. I mean, apparently it often doesn’t snow here until DECEMBER, which is such a foreign idea to me, I cannot even.

I have so many books to tell you about that I have managed to read in the past few weeks, but it will have to wait. Can you believe that it’s the end of July already? This month has flown by; I kind of feel like it should still be MAY. Well, here we are! I hope you have a wonderful week, and Happy August, my friends! xo

Five For Friday: The “We Moved!” Edition

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  • We did it! We moved! The house is almost entirely unpacked and organized and, relatedly, I am so physically tired. This may be as physically tired as I have ever been in my entire life. It would be an exaggeration to say that I have been on my feet every single day from the second I wake up to the second I go to bed, but not much of one. I realize that Not Everything Needs To Be Unpacked Immediately, but, well. After a couple of months of mess and disorganization in the old house, and a month of Pure Chaos, we all just want to be settled in and living in a clean and organized house. I mean, for a week before the move we were all eating dinner squashed on the couch around the coffee table, with one of my sons using the piano bench for a seat, as we had donated and gifted much of our furniture. We are all ready to resume life in a normal, non-boxed manner. And on that note, if you are planning a long-haul move, may I suggest having teenage boys and a handy, perfectionist husband? A few times this past week I have gone to bed and woken up to discover that my husband had built a whole row of shelves in the storage room, or that the guys had moved all the weights to nicely arrange the home gym. Since we have more vehicles than family members, getting them all there required some serious logistics. The weekend before the move, the guys drove out my husband’s car and my younger son’s truck, both completely full, including my Peloton and the extra dog crate (priorities!), and then flew back. I went to pick them up at the airport, and there was a problem with the gate. They sat on the tarmac for 75 minutes, which was about twenty minutes longer than their actual flight. Luckily I had taken a book with me, but let me tell you, tempers were FRAYED by the time they got into the car.
  • I missed the worst part of the move – the packing and the loading – as I drove myself and Rex out the day before the packers came. We all decided it would be best to not have Rex around while people packed boxes or loaded things into the truck, so I went to the new house early to clean and organize and buy groceries. The guys drove my husband’s truck and my older son’s car out two days after that, arriving late in the evening but before the movers arrived. I have driven that eight-hour route through the mountains many, many times, but never by myself, and never with so much stuff in the car that I couldn’t see out the rearview mirror. The drive itself was lovely and uneventful, and Rex did well in the car, which was a relief. It was a bit weird being in the new house alone; Rex and I were both really happy when the guys pulled in. I was also really happy that all our stuff made it in one moving van (plus all the multiple car and truck loads), with almost no damage. The guys helped the movers so much that the cost was actually less than half of what we thought it would be, so hooray for excessive late-teen testosterone. While helping a mover with the tremendously heavy granite-topped coffee table down the steps of our old lawn, an old lady pulled up and started a long conversation with my older son about our Christmas decorations and how she’d miss them, all the while the mover and my son had sweat pouring down their faces, biceps popping. It’s nice to be appreciated and missed, although my son thought the conversation could have happened when they weren’t carrying heavy furniture.

  • There is nothing like a move to make a person reconsider every possession owned. I have been obsessive about finding the perfect spot for absolutely everything, having learned from experience that I’ll just set this here until I find a better place is code for This is where this will live, forever. However, this is a very long and involved process and I have been constantly questioning whether or not we need an item. My sentimentality is long gone by this time and I am reminded of the poem by Mary Oliver entitled Storage. I kept saying things like “Do I REALLY need to keep this? Why do I still have my wedding dress?” which causes my husband to look at me with some alarm and say “I think you might want to keep your wedding dress, I think you might regret that.” But will I? Should I just keep it until I die and my great-grandchildren are saddled with all my fusty possessions, pressured to keep it until THEY die and have THEIR great-grandchildren wonder what this weird shred of possibly mouse-eaten material is?
  • This is probably bordering on the insane, but I have been cooking actual dinner every single night. Part of this is because there are no takeout places close by, and driving back and forth to get takeout would take as long as making a meal, and part of this is because the guys lived on takeout for about a week during the move and informed me that they missed my cooking So Very Much and were Dying For Vegetables. However! I will say that making a meal on top of unpacking, cleaning, and organizing for hours on end is the exhausting cherry on top of the taxing sundae.
  • Ever since I got here, everyone I have encountered – most notably my husband’s mother and sister – has treated me with kid gloves, assuming, I suppose, that I am One Toke Over The Breakdown Line. I welcome this gentle treatment, of course, but the honest truth is that I feel really great; I seem to have hopped the Melancholy Hurdle to start Embracing This Season of Life and Blooming Where I Am Planted. Probably this is because I have had numerous emotional breakdowns over the past several months, and so it is all out of my system. This is a good reminder of the benefits of Feeling Your Feelings, whatever they may be, and so if you too find yourself sobbing on your Peloton, hysterically cry-singing along with Miley Cyrus, IT IS OKAY. There will be a time after this, and you’re not alone.

I have much more to tell you, but it will have to wait. In the meantime: how are you? I’ve missed you all! Tell me everything that has been going on. xo