After a very busy and productive August, the garden is starting to take its annual September Slow Down. Every single day last month, I spent hours in the garden harvesting berries and vegetables, weeding, and deadheading. I was especially proud of myself for my management of what I like to call The Annual Zucchini Situation; I had been picking them when they’ve been of medium size, I’ve been using them up or successfully pawning them off on my very sweet friends, and no one in my house has mutinied due to the zucchini-in-everything Augusts of the past. A few weeks ago I was in the garden, thinking about this in a very smug way, and as we all know, karma does not enjoy smugness as a character trait. I immediately tripped over a massive zucchini that had apparently appeared out of nowhere.

I can only imagine it had been watching me for weeks from its hiding place under a large leaf.

Raspberry Beret

In addition to an actual ocean of tomatoes, I have been enjoying a tidal wave of raspberries. There is no need to figure out what to do with all of them, because as soon as I pick a bowl, it magically disappears. But a few weeks ago I had a bigger than normal raspberry harvest, and I also had an unaccountable gap in my weekly meal plan. I decided to do something I haven’t done in years, since before we moved here in 2023, which was to make breakfast for dinner. I thought I’d use the raspberries, along with my farm market peaches and nectarines, for a fruit salad to go along with my Famed Cinnamon Waffles.

The Landslide’ll Bring You Down

My cinnamon waffles were Famed only in my sons’ circle of friends. During their teen years, the boys had early dismissal on Fridays, and most of the time on those days my house would be suddenly filled with famished teen boys. I always made them cinnamon waffles because it was such a massive recipe, and then I would bask in the glory of being the Mom With The Best Waffles Ever. There is nothing, nothing so satisfying as cooking for teenage boys. No one is so ravenously appreciative.

Filled with nostalgia, I pulled out my waffle maker and went to grab the recipe for Nicole’s Famed Cinnamon Waffles, which were not Nicole’s at all, but merely a recipe in the little booklet that came with the waffle maker. And that is when I discovered that the little waffle maker recipe book was MISSING.

To my surprise, I immediately spiralled into the same kind of sadness that I had experienced back in 2023, when my bookmark collection was forever lost in the moving process. I assumed that the waffle recipe book had followed suit, and all was ashes. I was sad all over again, thinking of all those Friday afternoons when the mudroom was piled with gigantic dirty shoes and the dining room table was sticky with syrup, when Barkley braved the noise of ten teen boys in the house in the hopes of some dropped waffles, when said boys exited the dining room all saying That was AWESOME, Nicole, thank you! Never again would that happen for me, mostly because I don’t live there anymore, I don’t have teenagers, and Barkley is, sadly, long gone. Also because I would be unable to replicate the recipe. I was surprised at my sudden and intense reaction. Just feel your feelings, I said to myself sadly. The lack of the Famed Cinnamon Waffle Recipe felt devastating. Not as devastating as the bookmarks – I didn’t cry myself into a dehydrated state – but sad nonetheless.

Guess Who’s Back? Back Again?

As I wallowed in sadness, I realized that, current fashion trends notwithstanding, we are not in the Nineties anymore. We live in the Age of Information! And not all of it is Mis-or-Disinformation! I bustled over to my trusty laptop and searched up Cuisinart Waffle Maker Recipe Book and lo. There it was, the Famed Cinnamon Waffle recipe. What a time to be alive. I immediately printed it off and filed it in my recipe book, to ward off any future breakfast item-related sadness spirals.

I Get By With A Little Help From My Friends

The happy ending to the waffle recipe sadness spiral reminded me how wonderful the world is, and not just because we can access any kind of information at any time. It reminded me of how all of you, dear readers, rallied when my bookmarks were lost. I was going through such a massive transition in my life, and the bookmarks felt symbolic in the saddest way. No one, not one person, said they’re just bookmarks, get over yourself. Instead, friends from near and far provided me with bookmarks. My friend Sammi drove over to my house with a selection immediately on hearing the news, I received bookmarks from Washington State to Marco Island, from the US Midwest to California, from Alberta to Saskatchewan to Ontario, from Barcelona and Portugal. My son made me bookmarks featuring Rex, Salvadore the gnome, and Gerbera daisies for Christmas. My sweet friend Gigi (HI GIGI) cross-stitched personalized flowered bookmarks for me. I keep my collection in a tin that my longtime friend Elise (HI ELISE) sent me, and every time I start a new book, I happily choose one and think of what a gift it is to have such people in my life.

I will never forget how supported and loved I felt and still feel. Thank you, friends.

All You Need Is Love

Speaking of fun and exciting things in the mail, I received this from my friend Engie (HI ENGIE).

I literally screamed with delight when I opened it. Gnomes, love, AND math? I’m in heaven. Receiving fun mail reminded me that we are now into September, and it’s not too soon to start thinking about holiday cards. Are you a Holiday Card Person? If so, let’s exchange cards! (EXCHANGE is the key word here). Merely fill out this google form, and I will send you my address. If you are already on my list, no need to fill out the form, unless your address has changed. Now, I think that’s enough randomness – let’s get on to this week’s very mixed reading.

Weekly Reading

I had a DNF this week: Heated Rivalry. You all know I love a closed door romance, and whoa nelly, that was not this. It was way too spicy for me and I DNF’d at about the 12% mark, after the third graphic anal sex scene had me Kegeling like nobody’s business.

Her One Regret. From the author of The Nine Lives of Rose Napolitano – a book about a woman coerced into having a baby – comes this book about the biggest taboo in motherhood; namely, regretting becoming one. It is touted as a mix between a thriller and a manifesto, and indeed, it does get at some uncomfortable truths about early motherhood like exhaustion, resentment, change of identity, and overwhelm due to the stunning responsibility that is caring for a tiny helpless person. I will say that it’s pretty repetitive and overly convoluted, and every man in this book is as flat and one-dimensional as can be – they are all complete dicks. The “thriller” part was less than thrilling, in fact when the big reveal occurred I thought “Huh. Okay.” and moved on with my life. It does highlight that society views mothers that leave their families VERY different than they do fathers that leave, but mostly I felt it was kind of overwritten and a bit dull.

Inheritance. What makes a father a father? How does your biological ancestry affect who you are as a person? This memoir explores such questions after the author discovers, through an ancestry DNA test, that her long-deceased father was not her biological father due to a very sketchy infertility “treatment.” I will say that the author’s journey to peace with this very disturbing discovery is quite interesting and eventually lovely, but something did not sit well with me throughout this reading. I am in no way disparaging or questioning her lived experience. I am sure it’s extremely disorienting to discover that your father isn’t who you thought he was, and in the author’s case, this had larger implications. Her father’s family was a prominent Orthodox Jewish one, and on her discovery, she felt as though she had lost her identity and was subsequently traumatized. “It’s traumatic because I’m fifty-four years old and I found out the father I adored, the father who raised me, was not my biological father. That the family I thought I came from is not my biological family. That my ancestors are not my biological ancestors.” I understand this, however, I take a bit of issue with it. I would say that a father who adored you and raised you IS your father, end of story. I suppose I feel touchy about this because my beloved Grandma Fern was my step-grandma. We were not related by blood, but she was still my grandma. She cherished me exactly the same as she did her biological grandchildren. In the author’s case, a (sketchy) sperm donation does not make a father, in my mind. Anyway, this was a very interesting and kind of wild read about the nature of infertility treatments in the early 60s. I also learned a lot about Orthodox Judaism. This was definitely worth the read, and had me thinking a lot about the nature of families. I think there is just so much more to family than blood.

Walking With Beth. During the Covid pandemic, the 71 year-old author and her 101-year-old friend Beth deepen their friendship with regular walks and talks, and this book is a record of their conversations. Both women are from very prominent Canadian families, and so their recollections of their younger years were quite interesting to me, not to mention all they’d seen throughout their lives. Beth was born in 2020, at the end of the 1918 influenza pandemic, so it’s interesting that the two bonded 100 years later. This book introduced me to the concept of Anam Cara, “soul-friend,” of whom I am fortunate to have a few. “This friendship…was an act of recognition and belonging. When you had an anam cara, your friendship cut across all convention, morality, and category. You were joined in an ancient and eternal way with the friend of your soul. This art of belonging awakened and fostered a deep and special companionship.” This is a beautiful story of aging and friendship, and I LOVED the description of Beth’s outfits. Talk about goals! Thanks to Elisabeth and Pearl (HI ELISABETH HI PEARL) for mentioning this book.

Hello to September! We are going on a little road trip this week, and I have the feeling we will be seeing lots of fall foliage. In the meantime, take care, friends. xo

When I was in Grade Five or so, my best friend’s mom imposed a rule on her that she could not take out “junk” books from the library. She was not allowed to read what the rest of us were furtively reading, which were the Sweet Valley High and Cheerleader series, and their ilk. At the time it struck me as patently unfair, and now, looking back on it, it strikes me as patently stupid. What kind of a person puts reading restrictions on a ten-year-old? Even my own mother, who was no slouch in the “strict rules” department, did not know or care what I was reading at any given time; I soon graduated from those books to things like Flowers in the Attic, Clan of the Cave Bear, and Elvis and Me, all of which combined to give me a very strange outlook on life. To this day I will not eat powdered doughnuts.

No matter. I strongly believe that kids should read just what they want to read, and so should adults, with no apologies. For me, I have always been interested almost exclusively in the lives of girls and women – both the concept and the actual book – and so the vast majority of the books I read have female protagonists and are written by women. In fact, it’s somewhat of a joke in my house if I’m reading a book written by a man: the guys will ask if he’s gay, British, or gay and British, and indeed, that does tend to be the exception to my women-only rule. There are exceptions to the exception, though; this calendar year I have read two 5-star books by non-gay, non-British men, The Remains of the Day and Grace and Henry’s Holiday Movie Marathon.

I love character-driven novels about the minutia of life, I love books about the extraordinariness of ordinary life, I love prose and dialogue that is clever, witty, and beautiful. This means much of my reading is women’s literary fiction, although I do like an occasional upmarket or romance. I do not care for dystopian books at all, but as I said, there are exceptions: I love both The Handmaid’s Tale and I Who Have Never Known Men. I don’t like magical realism or fantasy, but I loved The Husbands and The Mists of Avalon, the latter of which I have read multiple times. I shy away from horror, having been scarred by a single reading of Misery back in 1990, and also because I generally am easily terrified. Books that contain time travel, sci-fi, or futuristic timelines are completely uninteresting to me and I refuse to read them. I don’t tend to gravitate toward thrillers or mysteries, but occasionally I will be coaxed into one by a glowing review from my friend Suzanne, and I always end up enjoying it (HI SUZANNE). Historical fiction is a tricky category for me. I don’t like when things wrap up too neatly, and also my number one pet peeve is when current day values or language are imposed on a book of yesteryear, which happens often in historical fiction. That said, I absolutely loved Isola, as well as any number of novels about spunky letter-writing women during the Blitz in London. I enjoy a well-written and entertaining memoir and the occasional interesting non-fiction as well. Sometimes I think I should branch out more, genre-wise, but mostly I just embrace what I like.

Who and Where

My TBR – to be read – list is staggeringly long and it just gets longer every day. The problem is I have so many well-read friends who are always recommending excellent books, although I have gotten very selective as to who I take recommendations from, having blindly picked up, and then regretted, many titles. And it goes the other way too: I once had an old school friend message me on Instagram, angry that she had BOUGHT three books on my glowing recommendations, and that “nothing happened in any of them!” They were so boring and I can’t believe you liked them! What a waste of money! she said. Well. The only thing I can say to that is that you really need to know a person’s taste BEFORE you take on their recommendations, and certainly before you commit to buying them. Support your local libraries! It’s a cost-free way to read – or not read – as many books as you like.

Speaking of Instagram, I do get a lot of recommendations from there; I follow a number of bookstagram accounts, and I also have some friends who are avid readers and with whom I share interests and tastes. My friend Anna (HI ANNA) and I enjoy 95% of the same books, so when she recommends something, I listen. I also get a lot of ideas from blog friends; notably Allison (HI ALLISON) who puts up a very detailed annual summary every January. I take a lot of her four and five star fiction recommendations. She is much wider-read than I am, genre-wise, but she always separates out horror, sci-fi, thriller, and mysteries, so I don’t get myself entangled in anything that I am uninterested in or scared of.

I also get a number of recommendations from podcasts, although that has been hit-and-miss for me. I enthusiastically picked up The Idea of You based on a podcaster’s recommendation and I never trusted that woman again. Just like that old school friend will never trust me again. The world is a vast tapestry, big wheel keeps on turning, Proud Mary keeps on burning.

When and How

I read 2-3 books per week, almost all physical books, the rest on an ereader, and the reason I can manage this pace is twofold: I am a fast reader, and I carve out time to read every day. Even in my busiest eras of life, of which I am markedly NOT in currently, I always made time for reading daily. Reading is the R in my REM Y REM protocol for mental health and general well-being. (Exercise, Meditation, Yoga, and REM sleep are the other key parts). I read both in small snippets throughout the day, and then longer stretches in the later afternoon or evening. My husband is a sports fan, and there are games or tournaments or what have you most months of the year, so while he watches those in the evening I keep him company by reading on the couch. I try to read for an additional 30-60 minutes during the afternoon, depending on my day. I read while I eat lunch, I always have a book in my bag so I have something to read if I’m delayed or waiting somewhere, and I try to pick up my current read whenever I have a few spare minutes, rather than scroll on my phone. Recently my friend Elisabeth (HI ELISABETH) shared a “Couch to 5K,” but for reading, which I think is kind of brilliant. We are all so fractured, attention-wise, these days that I think there is real value in just concentrating on a book. It’s beneficial for our brains and our outlooks on life. What could give us more knowledge and information than reading? It’s never wasted time, as far as I’m concerned, and I never feel guilty about it. I know plenty of people who feel that reading is unproductive, but a) what are we being productive for, b) taking time for ourselves benefits everyone in a “put on your oxygen mask before helping others with theirs” way, and c) fuck the patriarchy that wants to keep women busy every second of the day.

Weekly Reading

A Woman in Berlin. I know I declared Reread Fortnight to be over, but I squeezed in one more, which I first read about 25 years ago for a now-long-defunct book club. This is an actual account, based on the author’s diary and notes, of the fall of Berlin in 1945. If ever you are having a bad day, remember you are not a woman in Berlin, a city which was bombed to rubble, foraging for food and getting raped six ways to Sunday by the Red Army, all with the shame of what your country’s leadership has done. It is grim. But here is an interesting sidebar: up until TWO WEEKS AGO, I had a picture in my mind of post-war Germany, and that picture had a line down the centre, dividing it into East and West Germany. I had assumed that Berlin just happened to be in the middle of that line, thus the division and eventual wall. HOW WRONG I WAS! Berlin is actually very deep into the heart of what was East Germany, so that West Berlin was surrounded on all sides by red, if you will. This blows my mind! I had no idea. If you were a person in West Berlin, would you be able to travel to West Germany easily? I suppose there would be checkpoints and so forth, but it is a long way from West Berlin to West Germany. If anyone can point me to further reading material on this subject, I would be very grateful. I know I have some German readers, so please let me know if you have any recommendations.

Silver Sparrow. I loved this book about two girls who are half-sisters – one of them knows it, one of them doesn’t. Their father is a bigamist, and this is a dual-perspective story about the lives of the two girls as they grow up in Atlanta, but it’s so much more. The characters are so richly developed, and there is such a statement about generational cycles. The ending made my jaw drop a little. A beautifully-written, compelling story.

The Sweet Spot. Oh, I loved this delightfully heartwarming book with all its charming characters and really great arcs. It has all my favourite literary f-words: found family, friends, funny dialogue, and forgiveness. There’s fucking too, but it’s all closed-door and perfectly non-spicy, which is exactly how I like it, literarily speaking. I love it when a motley crew of characters all end up working together for a common goal, and that is exactly what happens when a baby finds itself in need of a caretaker – or, in this case, many caretakers. This is just a lovely, feel-good book, perfect cheer for a gloomy, rainy weekend. WHO recommended this book? I owe you one! And not in the way of my old school friend, or, I should say, my former school friend.

There was some sad news this week: Dolly Parton passed away. She was an absolute angel, and among numerous significant charitable contributions was a champion for children’s literacy. I dedicate this book talk miniseries to her memory. May she rest in fabulous, over-the-top, glittery peace.

My feeling is that everything is easier when it is shared, and also there is no such thing as too much information. Today I will be talking about my Favourite Things when it comes to managing this sweaty, roller coaster-y stage of life. We are in this together, ladies! I also hope my three male readers enjoy the ride.

Nicole’s Favourite Things: The Perimenopause Edition

HRT for Me

When I was in prenatal class with my first pregnancy, I was assigned a “birth plan” to create. I remember clearly that my “plan,” such as it was, would be to try to avoid an epidural or other drugs, but I wasn’t opposed to them if needed. I had never had a baby before, so I didn’t know if I would want them or not. And indeed, I did have not one but two drug-free births, but during the first one, I started screaming I can’t do it anymore, I need the drugs!, at which point the nurse told me I was nine and half centimetres dilated, it was too late, no drugs for me. The second time around was even faster, and so I never asked for any. Plus I felt like an old pro by that time, as my babies were born less than eighteen months apart, and the vag wasn’t what it once was, if you know what I’m saying.

I have always found it a little distasteful when there is smugness involved in anything birth and parenting related, because the wheel of fortune is undiscerning. My labours were four and two hours long, respectively, but if I was a woman who was in labour for many hours or even days, I would absolutely have had drugs.

I had the same feeling about hormone replacement treatment for perimenopause, namely that I would consider it if I ever felt that I needed to. And for years I didn’t need to; for the longest time, I thought not right now, I can manage without, it’s not so bad, until last April. Last April, things became unmanageable. Suddenly I was unable to get restorative sleep, I was exhausted all the time, my whole body thrummed with fatigue and, oddly, an elevated heartrate. I was having hot flashes and night sweats constantly, and I just could not cope. I didn’t want to cope. My doctor, a brilliant and progressive young woman, immediately prescribed a low dose oral estrogen and progesterone protocol. When I went to the pharmacy to pick it up, the pharmacist explained that the estrogen would help with the hot flashes and the progesterone would help me sleep. Friends, I was so tired that I just burst into relieved tears, right there at the Costco pharmacy. The pharmacist smiled knowingly. The estrogen will help with the mood swings too.

I cannot begin to explain how life-changing this has been for me. In the way that you can’t tell how bad something is until you’re out of it, I realized I was on an energetic downward trajectory for MONTHS, and now I feel like my old self again. I wake up feeling restored and refreshed, my body doesn’t ache, my plantar fasciitis cleared up completely, and I have had not ONE incident of hot flashes or night sweats. My energy is great, I feel good, my cognitive function is such that I’m not wondering if I’m slowly losing my mind. Prior to HRT I was forgetting words like “lunch.” THANK GOD FOR MODERN MEDICINE.

Ritual Stacking

I never forget to take my medication, vitamins, or supplements because I always tie them to something else. I take most things with my breakfast and lunch, but progesterone needs to be taken at night. I keep this mug that my friend Joy gave me (HI JOY) next to my bathroom sink; I tie the progesterone to my nighttime flossing and brushing routine. The mug makes me smile every day, and it feels like a call-out to all us Peri Bitches.

BEAST MODE

I bought you a present! my husband said, and I excitedly bustled over to see what it was.

Some people might not be super excited about a pull-up assist, but I sure was. We are all supposed to be working on strength to counteract age-and-hormone related loss of muscle mass and to improve bone density, and I do, but wow, is it boring. I grimly do my weight training routine with as much joy as I do the vacuuming: I like the end result but it’s just another chore in the day to get there. However, I will say that this pull-up assist is SO much fun. I feel like an absolute beast.

Look at me go! I find it very satisfying that eighteen months ago I could only hang, straight-armed, for a count of ten, and now I can do pull-ups with only the lowest-level of assistance. Maybe one day I will be able to do them totally unassisted! But even if not, it is the journey, not the destination, life is a highway, etcetera.

Roll Out The Welcome Matte

If you are a Gen X woman, then you will surely remember the days of using St Ives Apricot Scrub followed by Sea Breeze toner and Cover Girl matte foundation and pressed powder. We valued a matte face, let’s put it that way, and I still do. I hate the feeling of my face being dewy and shiny; I wear pressed powder every single day and have since I first started wearing makeup. The problem is that once a woman reaches a certain age, a matte look can exacerbate certain lines and wrinkles. How to balance the two?

I absolutely love Tarte BB Blur tinted moisturizer, which provides much-needed moisture without a ton of shine. It purports to have SPF, but it doesn’t say that on the tube, and so I apply it overtop my Neutrogena Face Serum Sunscreen.

It’s still dewier than I like, so I have been following it up with Tower 28 pressed powder; I had seen this powder highly recommended, and I will tell you it is worth the extra expense. It gives a matte finish that lasts all day, without any need for touch-ups.

It also doesn’t collect in little lines and crevices, which is an important consideration for me.

Wrap It Up

I am just not ready to embrace my natural hair colour, which is white and grey. For one thing, to go au naturel would be quite the undertaking: I would have to live with increasingly longer white and grey roots with increasingly fading red ends, or I would have to cut my hair super short and just let it be white and grey, or I would have to have my colour stripped out and then somehow allow my stripped hair to blend in with the white and grey. None of these options appeal.

I usually wear my hair in a bun if I’m on my third day of the three-day wash cycle, and for the last ten days before colouring my roots are pretty noticeable. Enter the hair wrap!

I just got this new one from Scrummy Scrunchies on Etsy; it’s nice and long and I can loop it around my head a few times or let it hang down my back in a bohemian kind of way.

In addition to covering up the roots, it also covers up thinner spots. I know, no one wants to talk about thinning hair, but it happens to the best of us. The feminine mystique takes a bit of a beating during perimenopause; our skin changes, our temperatures change, we sweat more, our periods are all over the place, our vaginas dry up, our waistlines expand, we sprout moustaches and chin hairs, and OUR HAIR STARTS TO FALL OUT. I will give another plug for Nutrafol (I WISH I was sponsored, alas, I am not), which I have been taking religiously since November 2022, and which has made a significant difference in my hair density. At one point, I was actually worried I was going to go bald. My Calgary doctor – A MAN – dismissed my hair loss concerns and said to me flippantly “How many bald women do you see, really?” To which I informed him that actually, my paternal grandmother had to wear a wig because her hair fell out, DO NOT GASLIGHT ME ABOUT MY HAIR, DOCTOR.

Anyway. Nutrafol has worked wonders but the thing about a hair growth supplement is that one’s roots become en evidence much quicker. Well, I can’t simultaneously complain about rapidly-appearing roots from hair growth while taking a hair growth supplement.

Outfit of the Month

I have a tale to tell about this skirt. I was in the market for a summer skirt that was more structured than my usual, and this one from Lululemon seemed to fit the bill. It is the perfect length, it is made of a stiffer material than my athletic skirts, it has a side zipper for a sleek silhouette, it has shorts attached underneath, and it has pockets! Perfection! The reviews online indicated that it fit smaller than usual, and since half my wardrobe is from Lululemon, I very confidently ordered it one size up.

When it arrived, I could not do up the zipper. Well, that’s not true. I was able to do up the zipper, but it involved massive sucking in. Also, I ended up zipping the skin of my waist into the zipper, which was a painful insult-to-injury situation.

I know what you’re thinking, because I was thinking the same thing. Did I changed sizes? I wondered euphemistically. I tried on my very fitted, structured Lululemon pants that involve buttons and zippers, but mysteriously, they fit perfectly. I tried on my jeans, and it was the same thing. It soon became evident that it was not me, it was the skirt, and so I took it back to the store and did what I should have done in the first place, which was to try it on.

And I ended up going up THREE sizes.

I mention this to illustrate that women’s clothing sizes are a joke. We tie so much of ourselves to a certain size – or weight – and then we feel badly when things don’t line up. But those numbers are just numbers. Those numbers are not US. A different number is not some kind of moral failing and it doesn’t say anything about us as a person. All the clothes in my closet fit perfectly, and there are many different sizes involved, depending on the store or brand. I will say that I felt a bit taken aback, going up three sizes for a skirt, and Younger Nicole might not have bought the skirt at all. Wouldn’t that be a shame! Forgoing something so cute for a stupid metric like a clothing size, and in any case, Lululemon tags are designed to be ripped out.

Sandals are from Skechers – comfortable shoes are a must at this stage of the game – and the top is an old one from the Gap.

The thing about perimenopause is that I feel lucky to experience it. Some women don’t make it this far! And the truth is that although some parts of it are absolutely unpleasant, we live in an age where we can talk about it, and there are medical interventions that can help with the really bothersome symptoms. I’m so happy to have a good and open doctor, I am so happy to have access to HRT, and I’m thrilled to live in a world where there are cosmetics, hair colour, and elastic waistbands. xo

The book in question took its title from one of my favourite poems by my very favourite poet; the book was called This One Wild and Precious Life. It had a beautiful cover. I had read a positive review. And that book remains, to this day, one of my most hated books ever. It was smug, pretentious, judgmental, hypocritical, and off-putting in every way. I was so angry when I read it and I was angrier still at myself. Because, even while I hated every single page, I FINISHED IT.

At that moment I made a vow. I was not going to push through and finish books just for the sake of finishing them. What a waste of time! The hours I spent reading This One Wild and Precious Life, I could have been reading an enjoyable book. I could have been rereading an enjoyable book. I could have been reading a marginal but inoffensive book. I could have been scrolling Instagram and looking at photos of people’s children in matching holiday jammies. I could have been doing any number of things and it would have been a better use of my time than reading that book. I vowed right then and there that I would abandon ship – I would DNF – when I wasn’t enjoying a book.

It’s not like I have always finished books that are unpleasant to me: I have never gotten through more than the first chapter of both The Shipping News and The Secret Garden, two books that seem like they should be right up my alley, but aren’t. I once picked up a book with a great back cover copy and a beautiful cover, and within the first chapter it was apparent that the story involved a father raping his sixteen-year-old daughter, and I literally threw the book across the room before sedately collecting it and walking it back to the library. I don’t even remember the title. I’m sure there are other books that I didn’t finish prior to December 2022, but they don’t stand out in my mind. The vast majority of the time, I would just slog through a book until it was done, and then feel kind of low about it.

Life is a journey and I am a work in progress, and so I haven’t always been great about this, but I have been trying to DNF more and more these days. After all, we are here for a good time, not a long time, and I am going to have a good time reading books that I love every day.

I have noticed that if I am more than a third of the way through a book I tend to push to the end, even if it is a slog. I will also push through if a friend highly recommended it, but I have definitely gotten more selective about whose recommendations I heed. A friend once told me that Small Game Hunting at the Local Coward Gun Club was the BEST book she had ever read, and listen, I have read any number of bleak and depressing books in my time, but this was the bleakest and most depressing. I kept reading – she said it was the best ever! – and dear lord, do I regret my choices. I kept waiting for something, anything good to happen, and no. No. I feel depressed even thinking about it.

The moral of this story is that you should understand your friends’ reading preferences before you take on their favourite books. Otherwise, you will be explaining how you disliked the book and why, which can lead to awkwardness or, in some cases, hurt feelings. The other option would be to lie about it which, in addition to being morally suspect, will only lead to more disagreeable recommendations in the future.

I don’t have a hard and fast rule for DNFing, but my general feeling is that if I am not excited, compelled, or at least mildly interested to pick up a book, it is a candidate for abandonment. There are some themes that I find too upsetting to read about ever, namely addiction and hard drug use. I am still scarred from a scene in Trainspotting, and I didn’t even read that book. I merely flipped through it at a bookstore, read a scene which I can only describe as deeply horrifying, and set it down before backing away slowly. The fastest I abandoned a book was one that I didn’t even start: it was Matthew Perry’s memoir. Why I had picked this up, I do not know, but as I casually flipped through the pages prior to beginning it, I realized that the entire thing, start to finish, was about his extreme drug addictions. I took it back to the library that very same day.

The other big DNF trigger for me is abuse: child, sexual, or domestic. This is very dependent on both the book and my mood, but in general anything gratuitous or graphic is a non-starter for me. I have read many such books and I do not think my life has been enhanced by them in any way. Well, I suppose it has given me a more compassionate outlook, in that we don’t know what a person is going through at any given time. But I still feel incredible anger when I think of Angela’s Ashes, The Glass Castle, and Educated. I want to go back in time and NOT read them.

At the dinner table, my younger son was telling me about football star Ray Lewis’ teenage workout routine. Lewis would draw from a deck of cards and do the number of pushups associated with that card – face cards were assigned 10, 15, and 20 – and he would go through the entire deck in one workout. Wow! I said conversationally. I wonder what made him come up with that! My son looked at me. His dad used to beat up his mom, and he wanted to be strong enough to prevent it ever happening again. I started to cry while my son hastened to reassure me that Lewis bought his mom a house with his first big NFL paycheque, and that she was safe, and friends, life is just so heartbreaking at times. There are so many unspeakably sad things happening every minute all over the world. I am at a point in my life where I don’t want to read things that are also unspeakably sad.

But also, I don’t want to read things that are unspeakably boring. There are so many books out there, and so many great books to reread. Not to be grim, but if I died tomorrow, would I have wanted to spend today reading a book that I should have abandoned? I mean, hopefully I WON’T die tomorrow, but carpe diem all the same.

Weekly Reading

I know what you’re going to say, and I will swoop in to admit that yes, there is a good deal of abuse and trauma in Elizabeth Strout’s books, but they are still amongst my favourites. The abuse and trauma are all part of the backstory, and are delicately alluded to; the books themselves are heartbreaking but also so hopeful and joyful, and belong to my favourite category of books, those that delve into the extraordinary details of ordinary life. Also, I got a ton of reading done this week as my husband was on a backcountry hiking and camping trip with my older son, and my younger son was working and dogsitting. It was just me and Rex, happily reading for hours each day.

Oh William! This is the third book in the Lucy Barton series, and it involves Lucy’s relationship with William, her ex-husband. William makes a huge discovery through an ancestry subscription he receives as a gift, and his life is never the same. For the record, I NEVER want to do one of those ancestry things! For so many reasons, but mostly, I DON’T WANT TO KNOW THINGS. Anyway, this book is excellent and, like all Strout’s books, I love it.

Lucy By The Sea. The fourth in the Lucy Barton series, and kind of the last – this one takes place during the first year of the pandemic, and whoa nelly, hold onto your hats because it is a very realistic picture of that very weird time. It seems like a fever dream now. I do really like this book but maybe not quite as much as the rest of the series, because it reminds me of not seeing or hugging people for so long, having schools closed, etc. But it is still a beautifully-written book which gave me much to think about, even with that awful lockdown year six years in the rearview mirror. Remember watching “the numbers?” God.

Tell Me Everything. This takes place after Lucy By The Sea, so it’s kind of, but not really part of the series. The first time I read this book, I was just overwhelmed with the happy feeling that it was a love letter to Strout fans. All of the characters for all her books – up to that point – were featured, and it is a beautiful story of connection and love. What hit me on the reread was the poignancy of an emotional affair-that-isn’t-really-an-affair. The book centres around a friendship that is ALMOST, but not quite, more than a friendship. It is also a quiet book about people, the life they lead, and how we all crave real connections. I love this book very much. 

To Kill A Mockingbird. Does it get any better than this beautiful story of humanity and community, of people trying to make change in a rigid and racist society? I love it so much. I am a person who rarely, rarely cries while reading, but the penultimate chapter brings a lump to my throat every single time I read it. This book contains two of my favourite lines ever written: “…I thought Jem and I would get grown but there wasn’t much else for us to learn, except maybe algebra,” and “I said I would like it very much, which was a lie, but one must lie under certain circumstances and at all times when one can’t do anything about them.”

And with that, Reread Fortnight has ended! My library holds are starting to come in and I have my dear friend Maya’s book to read as well (HI MAYA). We had rain this weekend, actual rain, for the first time in months. The air feels clear and fresh, the garden and farm market are full of deliciousness, and I baked a cake yesterday. Life is good. xo

You know, you go through life thinking that to your kids your personality is “Mom,” but then sometimes they surprise you by knowing your very soul.

He is right; that is exactly what I do if I have had too many depressing or heavy books in a row, or if I have had too many “how did this get published” books in a row. But in this case, it was neither. My post-travel library book flood had slowed to a trickle and, like parts of the creek beside which we walk every day, dried up completely.

So I thought I would take this opportunity for a little rereading. I love rereading. If I own a book, it’s because I want to read it more than once. The majority of the books on my shelves have been read at least twice, some many times more.

Someone asked me once why I would ever reread a book; after all, I know what’s going to happen, and there are so many unread books out there. To that I will respond that I certainly read more than my share of new books, and I find great joy and comfort in revisiting beautiful phrases, scenes, characters, and stories. I’m not a plot-driven person, and so it doesn’t matter to me if I already know the twist: I want to revel in the beauty of the words while we get there.

Because I reread so much and so frequently, certain scenes and sentences are constantly thrumming through my mind. I never pick strawberries without thinking of Mrs Elton in Emma, for example, and I am constantly mentally quoting from A Diary of a Provincial Lady. …that to live as I do, without any distractions, only leads to madness in the end. I will think of my poor nerves in the way of Mrs Bennett, the jelly won’t jell in the way of Meg March/ Brooke in Little Women when things are not going as expected. I always think of Grace Marks in Alias Grace when I have a perfect McIntosh apple: if I eat it, then it will be gone. My head is just generally a weird and wild swamp of song lyrics and literary examples at any given time of the day.

I do not like lending out my books because I am very emotionally attached to them, but I am certainly not precious about them myself. I think a cracked spine and stained pages show that a book, like the Velveteen Rabbit, is truly loved. Some books I have read until they have literally fallen apart, which requires delicacy when picking them up again.

One of my clearest childhood memories is when I was seven, just after my younger brother was born: my older brother and I were staying with my aunt at that time, and in order to escape from my pesty and ill-behaved young cousin, I read and reread A Little Princess over and over. It truly is a beautiful book that I have reread as an adult, and I will say that not only is it great in terms of story and clothing descriptions – a thing I value deeply in a book – but it is also a very interesting look at the plight of the poor and the wild class divisions in Victorian England. I have such love and sentimental attachment to A Little Princess, and I will hear no dissenters!

I feel similarly attached and sentimental about Little Women. I first read this at my grandparents’, who had a whole collection of these hard cover double books, meaning there would be two books in one.

Little Women was literally the only book in this huge collection that centred around girls, and I have, from day one, been almost exclusively interested in female-centred stories. The lives of girls and women, if you will. If I read Little Women once, I read it fifty times. I was deeply interested in the above-mentioned Meg: her preparations for the coming-out ball, the loss of her glove, and the scenes which are supposed to be instructive about vanity but I deeply identified with, her being dressed up and having champagne at the ball, and her desire for a new dress. I always thought that her husband was a total dolt, and that she could have done so much better, although this takes place during and after the American Civil War, so maybe she couldn’t. There probably wasn’t a whole lot to choose from.

When I think of my childhood, I think of all the time I spent reading and rereading favourite books, and as an adult, I find myself doing the same. I certainly had access to new books through the library, but I treasured so much diving back into a book I knew and loved. To this day, I can feel myself sink into happiness at the first lines, and then becoming thrilled anew when a beloved character is introduced or the plot turns. It’s such a great feeling.

Speaking of first lines, do you have any favourites? My top three are: Ten days after the war ended, my sister Laura drove a car off a bridge, It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife, and Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presents!

I am dedicating this week and the next to rereading, with the hope that no library holds come in, in the meantime.

Weekly Reading

Single, Carefree, Mellow. This short story collection, which I first read in 2021 and have read twice more since, gives me so much joy. What can I say, everything Katherine Heiny writes is pure gold. Some of the stories are connected and some aren’t, but every single one of them is a literary gift of pure delight. She’s just so witty and clever, and I was laughing so hard that I kind of stopped breathing and started to sound like some sort of seal. As with every one of her books, I have been going back and rereading paragraphs and pages that are especially wonderful, including but not limited to the following: “She collects garden gnomes,” Nina said. “You had an affair with someone who collects garden gnomes.” David sighed. “I know there’s that side of her,” he said. “But I never saw that.” Every single character is perfect, so much is conveyed in a single short story. I will never stop being completely in love with this book. 

Speaking of garden gnomes, dear reader Heidi (HI HEIDI) sent me this one all the way from Germany. Of course I named him Wolfgang, and now he hangs happily in my spirea shrub. Thank you, Heidi! I love him!

I should probably point out that I am NOT having an affair, let’s not draw too many parallels.

Commonwealth. The book that spurred this post! In addition to being a Katherine Heiny fangirl, I am also a hardcore Ann Patchett fangirl, and so I decided to revisit this beautiful novel about a blended family and how it is affected by an unspeakable tragedy. This book also asks: to whom do stories belong? It is SO well-written and emotive that it moves me deeply in so many ways every time I read it. Every character is truly an entire book unto themselves, which is just like people, I suppose.

My Name Is Lucy Barton. Why not make it three authors of which I fangirl constantly? I adore Elizabeth Strout, and her style of writing is so spare, beautiful, and wrenching, which really describes this entire book. It is heartbreaking and hopeful at the same time. It’s about poverty and trauma, isolation and abuse, but it’s also about escape and the ties that bind. Love is complicated, families are complicated, this book is complicated. I love it.

Anything Is Possible. The second book in the Lucy Barton series delves into all the people that Lucy and her mother chat about in the first book. If you’ve ever wondered whatever happened to so-and-so in your own life, you will appreciate this look into the various people of Lucy’s youth and where they ended up. I find it so interesting when people I knew “back when” end up living entirely unexpected existences. Well, the truth is I’m interested in where everyone ends up, unexpected or not, and so I loved this book.

I’ve decided to make Book Talk a mini-series until the end of the month. After all, there’s not much else to chat about, unless you want a minute-by-minute garden update! (or DO you?) Next week I’ll be talking about the opposite of rereading: DNFing, and then I will talk about genres, choosing what books to read, and making the time to curl up with a book. I’d love it if you’d join in and let me know if you are a rereader, and if so, what are your favourites? I’d love to hear about them. xo

The visits were perfect, marred only by the thick blanket of smoke that billowed in on Monday, when Suzanne arrived, and didn’t billow out until Friday night, after Tara left, albeit briefly. It has billowed back in, as there are some pretty serious fires fairly close to us right now. The air became so bad that my sons, both of whom work outdoors, texted me photos of them wearing masks, along with some wry Covid-era commentary. I told them they were a couple of sheeple before stepping into the shower to scrub the smoke smell out of my hair and skin, the yellowish rinse water swirling at my feet.

For most of the pandemic, I found myself reciting the Serenity Prayer like a mantra, and I do that now with forest fire season.

I was so honoured that my friends came so far to see little old me – through the smoke no less! – and as I was thinking of my luckiness, I came across this newsletter talking about the five-year stranger phenomenon. It was the first time I had heard this theory, but I’m well aware of the concept that friendships can fade when our lives cease to physically or mentally overlap, or when we change and grow. I have always subscribed to the theory that people come into your life for a reason, season, or lifetime, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t feel a pang when a friendship fades.

It’s so easy to keep in touch these days, and maybe it is too easy. It’s easy to feel like we really know a person while looking at their social media highlight reel, but relationships with any depth require more effort than that. However, the fact is that I love these highlight reels, I love seeing updates from people who would otherwise have faded from my life. I feel sure I would have lost touch with the girl I volunteered with at the nursing home when we were fifteen, and now I am celebrating her extensive travel and upcoming nuptials. I’ve become friends with former yoga students and people I have met while travelling, reconnected with people from grad school, and have become close with a cousin (HI KAREN) through our shared love of books and dogs, all due to social media. I love that I have these tools to communicate, but I admit that sometimes they can take the place of true heart-to-heart connection, the kind of intimacy and closeness we all need from our friends. I also admit that they can sometimes reveal unsettling information about a person, information that I was happier not having, from pandemics to politics and everything in-between. Because these relationships are often surface level, I can compartmentalize, but I would still rather not know if someone is using the term sheeple unironically.

My husband has a friend who loathes texting, so much so that he will return any text with a phone call. The more I think about this, the more I like it. Not that I’m going to do this – it’s a little much to make a constant stream of phone calls all day long in response to, say, someone’s Connections results – but I do like hearing my friends’ voices. Whereas I used to worry that a phone call would interrupt their day, I now think well, they can NOT answer if it’s a bother. And sometimes it IS a bother, and they don’t answer, and that’s okay. They can listen to my I just called to say I love you voice mails, and call back when and if they are so inclined.

Many years ago, I adopted a mindset reframe that I had read about: instead of saying I don’t have time for X, I say X is not a priority for me, and then I see how I feel about that. If I feel aghast, and I reassure myself that no, no, no, X really IS a priority, then I make the time. If I feel it is a true statement, then I just let it go. Not everything can be prioritized! A big priority for me is to show up for my friends. Sometimes it’s not physically possible; one of my best friends lives in Halifax (HI HANNAH), which is just about as far away as you can get without leaving the country or falling into the ocean. But we must have the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, and be grateful for modern technology that allows us to still communicate about everything from tulip murderers to the weird guy who talks angrily on Facetime with no headphones at the gym.

It’s not the new year, but I have a resolution to make more phone calls, send more cards and messages, and physically be there whenever possible. Have the courage to change the things you can, and the wisdom to know that placing a phone call on speaker in a public place is both an act of aggression and an invitation for me to eavesdrop on every word.

Weekly Reading

Kin. This book literally took my breath away several times. I will admit I went into it a bit apprehensively, being the only person I know who didn’t enjoy this author’s acclaimed An American Marriage. But wow, this book! It is a dual perspective between two “cradle friends,” motherless girls who grew up together but whose lives took two very different paths as adults. It’s a story about the deepest kind of friendship, the kind of friendship that is more than family, the kind of friendship in which each person is truly known. It’s immersive and evocative, heartbreaking and hopeful, viscerally beautiful and moving. I loved this so very much.

The Big M. For us ladies of a certain age comes this collection of essays about THE CHANGE. It’s an inspiring and empowering collection about the physical, mental, and emotional changes that come during perimenopause and the menopause transition. Some of the essays were absolutely great, some less so, but all in all a good collection.

It looks to be a smokey week around here, with fire fighters working around the clock. Meanwhile, I will just be practicing serenity and peering at the sky, optimistically thinking I might see a patch of blue. Have a lovely week, friends. Stay safe. xo

But as god is my witness, I will never plant bell peppers again. There are two reasons for this, and the first is because we consume far more peppers than I could possibly grow, unlike the aforementioned produce, which exceeds even the outside amount that one family can reasonably consume. The other reason is that, for the second year in a row, the peppers have been foiled by some manner of animal, most likely a rat. Or, as seems to be the case, several rats.

Let’s pause for a moment, Winston Smith-style, to shudder.

Last year, almost every single bell pepper had been gnawed on precisely when it would have been happily picked and consumed by me, and this year has seen every one disappear in such a way. But worse than that was that Something – Ratty McRatface, I presume – gnawed off TWO of my plants, leaving a mere three inch stick where a healthy plant once was. The thing that really gets me is that there was no pepper on those plants at all, and the plants themselves were just strewn merrily in the garden box. I am sensitive with regards to animals, and if one was EATING something, I would feel low-level sympathy, even while being annoyed at the bell pepper disappearance. But this is not that. This is just wanton destruction of plants. It’s plant murder.

Is the rat an out-of-control juvenile delinquent? Is this some kind of rat frat party? Maybe. It’s now set its sights on my smaller zinnias, because a few of them have also been snipped off at three-inch level.

I am typically a live-and-let-live girl when it comes to local wildlife, but I draw the line at a) the house, and b) the garden, especially the flowers.

And by “war,” I mean I will be glaring sadly and impotently at the destruction. Well, at least they have not touched the big zinnias or nasturtiums, which is important, as they are keeping those garden boxes busy since the Loss of the Greens. I like to have something nice to look at while I’m enjoying my afternoon read and sip.

Speaking of which, I was in the grocery store buying San Pellegrino, when I came across this.

I stared at it for many moments. Carl…Jung? The…Swiss psychiatrist? The…father of analytical psychology? Isn’t he…dead? Why is he…I thought that maybe I had conflated names somehow. I do that often. I confuse Tom Holland with Tom Hiddleston, Burt Lancaster with Burt Reynolds. I even once talked about Jimmy Page when I meant Jimmy Buffett. It wasn’t until I read Doppelganger in 2024 that I realized that – instead of confusing Naomi Wolff and Naomi Klein, which is the theme of the book – I had been conflating Naomi Klein and the 1970s YA author NORMA Klein for decades. I didn’t know Naomi Klein was a Canadian! I didn’t know she was a social activist! The author of Sunshine? That book about the woman with cancer?

As it turns out there are two famous Carl Jungs: the tell me your dreams Carl Jung, and Carl Jung the German non-alcoholic winemaker. I cannot fault myself for conflating the two because who knew? Certainly not me. And I certainly did not purchase any of the product, because although a non-alcoholic cooler is acceptable to me, a non-alcoholic wine is just a bridge too far.

Weekly Reading

I had a DNF this week, and that was The Kiss Quotient. My sweet friend Stephany (HI STEPHANY) had mentioned it as one of her favourite romances, and – this was the detail that sealed the deal for me – the protagonist is an econometrician. AN ECONOMETRICIAN. My people! It immediately evoked many happy memories of running regressions, data cleaning, and economic modelling. I was so excited that I even pulled out my master’s thesis, which I haven’t looked at for a few decades at least.

But, unsurprisingly for a romance, there was very little econometrics involved. WHO KNEW. Who knew no one else is interested in econometrics? The romance itself was a little spicy for my tastes, and it was a gender-swapped Pretty Woman-type story. I have to tell you that Pretty Woman is one of my least favourite movies of all time – ALL TIME – and so I sadly put the book aside and hung my head in shame as I told Stephany I had to DNF. She was so lovely and gracious, which reminded me to be lovely and gracious when and if someone DNFs my favourite books. Even though that book was not for me, I am happy that an econometrician was the sexy star of a romance. Justice for econometricians!

Speaking of books I maybe should have DNF’d:

The Names. What’s in a name, and can a name change the trajectory of a life? That is the premise of this book, which involves three parallel universes over a period of thirty-five years, based on the name given to the baby boy of a family. I will say that I found this book very difficult to read, and not just because it deals with terrible domestic abuse, but also because the middle was a bit of a slog to get through. It is not an uplifting book, although the prose is quite lyrical. It made me think of all the wasted time and lives, of all the sadnesses of the world, of how lives can be short or long but often are full of trauma and hardship. I can appreciate the book from a literary point of view, but from an emotional one I did not enjoy it. 

Sunshine Nails. From the author of Cleo Dang Would Rather Be Dead! In other words, Canadian author alert! This story follows an immigrant family’s struggle to keep their nail salon open when a fancy chain day spa opens up right across the street. It’s a story of resilience, family ties, and the importance of community. The bravery of people who leave their home countries to try to make a better life for themselves and their families – including the ones left at home – is astonishing to me. This story has a lot of heart, and I enjoyed it a lot.

Good People. My reading certainly got better as the week went on because wow! This is not only one of the best books I’ve read all year, it’s one of the best books I’ve read ever. It is written in an original way: a series of interviews, documentary-style, about the death of a teen girl. Information about the family involved is slowly released throughout the interviews, and it is incredibly engrossing and compelling. I loved it so much. It is, in my opinion, a perfect book.

I have such an exciting week ahead of me. I have not one but TWO sets of out-of-town visitors coming in, and I could not be happier. If you need me, I will be floating around in a cloud of joy. xo