I don’t believe that when you get married, you have to share everything, even friends. There are things that are shared and there are things that are individual, and this extends to household items. The houseplants are mine, the leaf blower is my husband’s. The Peloton is mine, the squat rack is his. We share the Vitamix but each have our own coffee maker; mine is a standard drip pot, his is a fancy espresso machine that I refuse to learn how to work. The grills are his and the stand mixer is mine, the puzzle board is shared property. The televisions and sound systems are his, the piano is mine. The camper is his, but I think he wishes it was ours. Alas for him.

Nicole’s Favourite Things: The Mine, His, Ours Edition

Ours: Wine Tastings

If you visit me, there is a 100% chance that I will take you for a wine tasting. It is my number one activity to do with houseguests, and there is a special, personal reason for it that goes beyond my love of wine: my husband’s family used to own the vineyard and winery that is now Tantalus. My husband’s grandfather worked to own the land, and my husband himself planted a number of the old Riesling plants that are still producing fruit. The backstory might be his, but I count this as ours since our son now works for this very vineyard. And also, again, I love wine.

Mine: The Veggie Garden

I mentally split up our yard as well as the interior of our house. The large perennial border is ours, but the lawn is definitely his. The veggie garden, on the other hand, is mine. It’s early in the season yet, but everything is coming up nicely. I have already harvested the arugula, and the kale will not be far behind.

Anyone else hear the ominous music playing? IT BEGINS.

Every year, I kind of forget the vast volume of greens we get. It’s a good problem to have! Arugula salad for all!

His: The Iris Garden

I think of our flower planters as ours, but also a little bit mine, while the iris garden is definitely his. There were several old irises and tulips growing above the rock wall that lines our carport when we moved here, and my husband has spent a lot of time restoring the overgrown bed, weeding and dividing and planting. May is the month it really shines!

Mine: Gnomes

This is an obvious one; the gnomes are clearly mine. This year I decided to hide them all within the gardens, and seeing them poke out between the plants makes me smile. It’s the kind of thing I would have loved as a child, hidden gnomes, and it brings me so much delight.

Mine: Special Sunscreen

When we travel, my husband does not pack shampoo because, as he says, hotels always provide it. This is true, but also, I will never not take my own hair care products. Who knows what kind of products they have? Who knows what state my hair will be in, using some random product? What if they only have 2-in-1 shampoo and conditioner? Relatedly, he uses the same sunscreen on his face that he uses on his body and there, as with using hotel shampoo, I draw a very thick and bold line. I am very choosy about the sunscreen I will use on my face, and my current favourite is one that my friend Suzanne alerted me to: Neutrogena Face Serum Sunscreen. (HI SUZANNE)

It doesn’t leave a residue, it absorbs quickly, and it works under makeup. What more do I want from a sunscreen, other than SPF protection?

The makeup table that the sunscreen is pictured on is something else that is mine, and mine alone, although the ensuite is ours.

Outfit of the Month

I don’t think I have ever in my entire life considered my husband’s opinion when I buy clothes or get dressed. I just assume that if I like my outfit, he will too, but even if he didn’t, it would have no effect on my sartorial choices. As my beloved Aunty C says, I dress for me.

To that end, this month’s outfit involves a black tee from the Gap, Skechers shoes, the world’s most comfortable pants from Lululemon, and a silk scarf from Cambodia. I wore this for a girl’s lunch out, but I think this is a perfect travel outfit. I’ve had those pants for years and they are versatile, light, and stretchy. What more do I want out of pants?

Of course, this blog is mine, and mine alone. Perhaps my husband would have a different view on things, but he doesn’t have a blog! I’m pretty sure he agrees on the iris garden, makeup table, and gnomes though. What are your favourite things this month, friends? Tell me everything. xo

It IS nice to have the company, and to also have a witness to the absolute chaos that is shopping at the only Costco in a 200 kilometre radius. We were there a few weeks ago, and I learned an important lesson: the week before Mother’s Day rivals that of the one before Christmas. Evidently this has to do with the garden centre, and not because everyone is obtaining massive ingredients to put on a feast of sorts. Whatever the reason, both the parking lot and the warehouse could only be described as insane, with lineups to the cashiers snaking all the way down to the end of the store. Every aisle was crammed with people, and my husband suggested that we turn around and go home.

THERE’S NO TURNING BACK NOW.

I had a significantly large list to get through, and it would not improve by NOT shopping. Also, even with all evidence to the contrary, I had a weirdly optimistic feeling. There was a shopping cart with two wheels jammed into the meridian near our car, and we had rescued it rather than taking one from the carrel. I cannot save all the abandoned carts that litter the parking lots, but I saved that one. Also, who DOES that? It’s so much more work to jam half the cart onto the meridian than it is to just wheel it over to the carrel that is twenty steps away.

In any case, my optimistic feeling panned out. The shopping experience was somewhat hellish, to be sure. As we were finishing up, I told my husband I would just grab a few things from the produce section and meet him in the lineup. I started walking, holding my tomatoes, cucumbers, and sweet potatoes, and then I kept walking. And walking. Where was he? The lineup had magically disappeared and he was preparing to put our items on the conveyor belt.

And that is called Cart Karma, and is why we rescue shopping carts.

In my not-so-recent Ask Me Anything, my friend Diane (HI DIANE) asked What are three things you consider yourself an expert on? As I’ve gotten older, I feel like I am less and less an expert on anything, and more of a lifelong learner, although I do consider myself pretty knowledgeable in the area of karma, both cart and regular.

Sometimes I think of my life as one giant sand mandala, the kind that Buddhist monks make and then destroy as a way of practicing non-attachment and impermanence, except instead of a beautiful divine palace, my sand mandala is a pantry full of groceries. It’s a thing of beauty. I love the feeling of having a stocked fridge and pantry, so full of fresh ingredients, destined to become delicious meals. But nothing lasts forever, and I know that in mere days the stock will deplete, only to lead to me heading to Superstore and Costco with grim determination to create the mandala again. Impermanence!

I also think I am an expert when it comes to the sand mandala that is actual dinner. For over two decades now, I have honed my skills in this area. I make a weekly menu plan, I grocery shop, and then I execute. I know dinner is a struggle for many families, so I don’t want to flex too much, but I enjoy cooking and everyone in this house enjoys eating my cooking.

But dinner truly is a beautiful sand mandala. There is a lot of preparation involved, and although I am the kind of cook who literally throws things together with only a that seems good thought, and definitely no recipe, it still is a labour, the product of which gets destroyed upon setting it on the table.

The ultimate sand mandala at this time of year, though, is weeding the garden. Can a person be an expert on weeding? I don’t know, but if so, I am one. I spend time almost every day weeding, with the understanding that the next day, I will be out there weeding again. There’s no end to the weeds, and although that can feel a bit Sisyphus-ish, it’s also very Zen. Impermanence, non-attachment, etcetera.

Malcolm Gladwell popularized the notion that it takes 10000 hours to become an expert on something, and if that is the case, then most of us are experts on things we didn’t plan or want to be. Like, am I now an expert on laundry? Washing dishes? Vacuuming the floor because someone fuzzy likes to go on adventures in the vineyard and tracks in acres of dry grass and other vegetation remnants?

It’s best to practice non-attachment in those areas as well. Clean laundry, dishes, and floors are all impermanent and, like Newman said about the mail, they never stop. But the brief time where the laundry is clean and folded, dishes are all put away, and the floor is gleaming, well. It’s beautiful, and it – like everything else – will not last.

Weekly Reading

My reading count this week is bonkers, and almost entirely due to the fact that I read a total of three books on Mother’s Day alone. What can I say, other than yoga and walking the dog, I did nothing but read that day. I also had two DNF’s that I expected to love and did not: Still Life and Mornings In Jenin. You win some, you lose some.

Pick a Colour. This was an interesting little book, told from the point of view of a nail salon owner, who used to be a boxer. It’s a commentary on social status, power dynamics, and the road not taken. 

A Winter Book. My friend Laura (HI LAURA) suggested this book of short stories by a famed Finnish children’s author. These are auto-fiction, and span from the author’s childhood to her old age. My favourites were the episalatory variety, but all contain vast nature descriptions of the Finnish landscape, both within Helsinki and on the isolated island where she spent a lot of time.

The Bobbsey Twins and the Tagalong Giraffe. The book that spurred a lifelong desire to go on safari in Africa! I read this when I was seven, and for the past forty-four years I’ve been longing to go to Africa to see the animals. And I will be, soon! Now, will my adventure involve an orphaned baby giraffe named Crackers who I will accompany to a new herd of giraffes? Who can say? I hope so! 

The Things We Never Say. If you know me at all, you know how much I love Elizabeth Strout. She is an auto-buy author for me; I love everything she has ever written, and this, her latest, is no exception. It is an incredibly moving story of a high school history teacher who learns a secret that changes how he views his own life and the world at large. As he teaches the American Civil War to his students, he is faced with a country divided, and he learns that everyone has things they never say to anyone. It is a statement on loneliness, and how a person can be dreadfully alone even when surrounded by people. Strout’s writing is, as always, beautiful and precise and I loved reading every word of this.

Kokoro. It would be difficult to overstate how much this book moved me, how much it resonated with me, how seen I felt while reading it. I wanted to note down every phrase that was meaningful to me, but I quickly realized I would be soon transcribing the entire book. This book of Japanese wisdom for living a life of meaning and fulfilment, particularly for people in midlife, is incredible in every way. I think I had an out-of-body experience reading this. I think the lessons are for everyone, but particularly for those of us in our “back nine eras.” Thank you again to my friend Laura (HI LAURA) for bringing this book to my attention, and I will be immediately looking up everything this author has written.

I cannot BELIEVE I forgot to mention one of my favourite Canadian groups, in last week’s post: Blue Rodeo! Here I am with JIM CUDDY, at a 2008 Plates of Gold Olympics fundraiser. If I look starstruck, it’s because I was. Also in the photo was my husband’s colleague’s wife and Kelly Hrudy, both cut out to make it look like it’s just me and Jim Cuddy. I also got to meet Sale and Pelletier, which will mean a lot for you pairs skating fans out there.

We have had houseguests for an extended long weekend, and it feels just like a holiday. I’ve been flexing my dinner-making muscles, as well as my wine-drinking ones. I’d like to extend my sand mandala metaphor to include the latter, but I cannot think of how to do it. xo

Well.

My plans quickly dissipated at the discovery that it would be approximately $700 at a minimum for the two of us to attend, which felt a little steep just to hear a live performance of Amish Paradise.

What was the first concert you attended? For me, it was INXS in 1988 for their Kick tour, and I believe the tickets were about $20. This Kicked off several years of concert-going on my part, and with one exception – Billy Joel in 1990 – the shows were all under $25, which was good, as my babysitting income was about $2.50 an hour at the time.

It will be news to no one that I have a song, if not in my heart, then definitely in my head at all times. I usually have a song in my heart too, but my brain is full of song lyrics from every genre in any decade. I am, as Spotify says, genre-fluid. I enjoy all kinds of music – almost anything can make me shimmy my shoulders and swing my hips, even while seated – and I associate many songs strongly with different eras of my life. My favourite genres are from the 70s: disco, yacht rock, soul and funk, as well as rock, but I am open to anything, and I most likely will be able to sing along to it, which tends to startle my husband. How do you remember that? he’ll ask when I sing anything from My Grandfather’s Clock to Parents Just Don’t Understand to Kryptonite.

For my birthday I was thinking of writing about all the songs that have meant a lot to me over the years, but then I realized that a) I could not narrow the list down to less than 200, and b) a massive list of songs felt boring to write and to read. Then I remembered that Rachael (HI RACHAEL) had asked me an interesting question on the Ask Me Anything I did back in December, which was Who are your favourite Canadian musicians/ groups?

First of all, I would like to shout out three out of four Gords for Canadian Decorative Gord Season:

Two of these Gords I saw in concert: the Barenaked Ladies for their Gordon tour, which I consider their best work. I have such great memories of it coming out when I was in high school; my friend Tracy (HI TRACY) and I would sing Hello City while we worked together in chemistry class. I was, I am embarrassed to tell you, nearly fifty years old before I realized that Hello City was about Halifax. Well, we are never too old to learn something new. The other Gord I saw was Gord Downey of the Tragically Hip. I think they take away your citizenship if you are a certain age and didn’t see the Hip in concert. It might be written in the Constitution, now that I think about it.

I don’t think a Gordon Lightfoot concert would be exactly bumping, but I love his music very much. Also, he’s dead. From that same era, I adore Joni Mitchell and the Guess Who. All three are national treasures, in my humble opinion. I also have a soft spot for Corey Hart, particularly because I wrote to his fan club and received a photocopied letter in return. Also, he filmed his Never Surrender video a mere 20 minutes away from our Calgary home.

I saw a number of Canadian music stars in concert back in the day, notably Alanis Morrisette for her Jagged Little Pill tour, and Tom Cochrane at a Canada Day music festival. This was pre- Life is a Highway, when his huge hit was the excellent Big League, which is SUCH a Canadian classic. Not many ways out of this cold Northern town, you work in the mill and get laid in the ground. And if you got a jump, it’ll be with the game. Oh, the dreams of hockey players of yore, hoping to be the next Fourth Gord. This was before youth hockey became A Thing, and anyone who knows Crazy Hockey Parents will know what I mean. My husband worked with a man who coached his kindergartener son’s Timbits hockey team. At the beginning of the season he cheerfully said that they were all there to have fun, after all, no one was going to the NHL. Several parents withdrew their kids from that team in protest of his attitude. THAT is what I mean. And as far as I know, none of them did go to the NHL. So.

Back in the 80s, after INXS I saw a few Canadian bands that would mean nothing to anyone not around in that time and place; notably 54-40 and the Grapes of Wrath. I have a couple of six-degrees of separation for both of those bands. The lead singer for 54-40 was the son-in-law of my junior high principal, which certainly made me look upon him with greater respect than a junior high principal typically gets from its student body.

As for the Grapes of Wrath, I had a titanic crush on guitarist Tom Hooper, to the point that my fourteen-year-old self would dream that we would one day meet and get married, and I would live in the magical place called Kelowna, from where the Grapes hailed. Life is funny; I DID marry a man from Kelowna and am now living in that magical place, and that man has friends who went to school with the entire band. As is probably typical, they were all high school misfits who absolutely hated their hometown, as evidenced in the song Backward Town. To be fair, Kelowna isn’t exactly on the cutting edge of anything. But still! It is a magical place where the flowering trees bloom in April.

When I was that angsty fourteen-year-old, I really thought that the kind of music a person listened to said something about the character of that person. I thought that people who enjoyed pop music were vapid and silly, while those who liked deep cuts of obscure bands were deep as the ocean. I mean, I dated a guy in part because he was really into obscure Depeche Mode tracks. Also, he wrote me a whole pile of bad poetry, typed it out, and presented it to me in a yellow duotang, which struck me as a very romantic gesture at the time.

Ah, the pretentiousness of youth. Popular music is popular for a reason, Young Nicole, and that is because it is FUN and also generally pleasing to listen to. These days, I think that the kind of music a person enjoys merely indicates that they enjoy that music, there is no character or moral assessment to be made. After all, I really like Nickleback.

Weekly Reading

Is This A Cry For Help? CANADIAN AUTHOR ALERT! This author also wrote the wonderful Everyone In This Room Will Someday Be Dead, which I read in 2021 and loved. I love libraries, and not just because they lend us books; they are also safe public spaces that run important programs for all different people, they allow access to the internet, and they are inclusive spaces. This book centres on a librarian who is just back from having a mental health crisis due to the sudden death of her ex-boyfriend. As she looks back on her time with him, she begins to deal with a small but vocal group of people who are calling for book bans and who believe the library has an “agenda.” Yes, its agenda is to be inclusive and to help the public. Anyway. This was a very good read and I enjoyed it so much.

The Rom-Commers. This is a rom-com about two screenwriters writing a rom-com. Cute, right? Well, Katherine Center’s brand is a cute rom-com with some serious tragic backstories, and this is no exception. One person is recovering from cancer, the other is the caretaker for her disabled father, who is FIFTY FIVE YEARS OLD. If you’re keeping track, that’s two books I’ve finished in less than four days in which the romantic lead is a caretaker for her fifty-something parent. Small digression here: this is part of the reason I wrote Inhale Exhale, because there are very few romances that feature people in the fifty-plus demographic. WE LIKE TO GET RAILED TOO, YOU KNOW. Some of us, despite our advanced ages, are not in need of caretaking and are totally DTF. Maybe even more so than before, because our children are grown and we have the house to ourselves, I hope my own sons are not reading this. Anyway. Back to the book at hand. It was pretty silly and contrived, but it was a fast and easy read, which can be a nice distraction from the whole…international situation.

The End of My Life is Killing Me. In June 2020 this author had a cough, and went for a Covid test. She found out she had stage four metastatic lung cancer. The book is a collection of essays about that time and the years after, dealing with treatment, the US health insurance system, weird public perceptions about lung cancer (hint: it’s victim-blamey), and well-meaning friends who suggest things like juicing and positive thinking as curative measures. Honestly, this was pretty dull and grinding, although there were a few interesting observations.

Thanks Rachael for the fun question; I realized there are a few questions I never answered, and I will do so post-haste. In the meantime, here are some of the many flowering trees that have been blooming these past four weeks. I wish you could smell them! You’ll have to believe me. xo

There were two specific reasons I was mall-shopping, and the first was that I was picking up my free bag of truffles from the new Lindt store. I had signed up for their special rewards program specifically to get free chocolates during my birthday month. They didn’t have strawberry or mint, but I did try a new fudge swirl. The lack of strawberry has been a low-key grievance in my house. I am never mad at either of my sons, but a year or so ago my younger son ate the last dark chocolate strawberry truffle that I had been saving, post-Galentines Day 2025, and I have never let him forget it. That flavour is hard to find and indeed, I have not seen it since early 2025. Remember when you ate the last dark chocolate strawberry and I never found it again? I’ll ask him, to which he responds that I never actually told him I was saving it and also it was in the basket with all the other Lindt truffles that were NOT being saved for a future, special occasion, known only to me.

Is it too much to ask that he reads my mind?

The second reason I was going to the mall was to buy a birthday gift for my mother. I had brought her a gift from Cambodia but I wanted to supplement that with her favourite vanilla-scented body lotion from Bath and Body Works. While I was there, I thought I would purchase a few lotions for myself. I don’t wear perfume, but I do like to choose a different scented body lotion based on my mood and that day’s activities.

I was approached with an offer of help by one of the salespeople, an extremely friendly and jolly woman around my age, with a haircut that can only be described as “fun.” I didn’t really need help, but I do like chatting with salespeople, particularly at a place like Bath and Body Works, where there is no commission. And although I have my favourite scents, I always like sniffing new ones. Every favourite scent was once a stranger, as no one says.

But it was so odd. Every time I reached for one of my favourites, the woman shook her head gravely. No, she’d say. You don’t want THAT one. Then she would steer me over to something very rose-forward and floral, and insist that it was perfect for me. I would nod, politely, and then go back and grab the my favourites, the scents that she insisted were Too Much. Oh, she would say, her lavender spikes bobbing slightly, her eyebrows raised. You…LIKE that? Hmm. And then she would start to steer me towards the vile-smelling peach lotions.

It’s not like I require agreement from customer service personnel on my personal scent choices, or that I fear their judgement, but it was awkward.

I wonder what her feeling was when she left work that day. I wonder if she went home and bemoaned the difficulty of working with customers who just would not listen to her. I wonder if I seemed like the exact right person for Peach Blossom or Rose Garden, and it was disappointing that I refused to be the person she wanted me to be.

Weekly Reading

This Is Not About Us. An ill-timed, crowd-pleasing apple cake brought to a septuagenarian’s funeral spurs a years-long feud between the sisters of the deceased, and that’s how this absolute delight of a book begins. I laughed so much throughout this gem; I could totally see similar things happening in my own family. What can I say, if you have a large extended family, there is never a shortage of drama! The book unfolds in vignettes, each one focusing on different branches of the family. If you are looking for a thick plot, this is not for you, but if you are looking for a wonderful slice of a family’s life with compelling and relatable characters, look no further! I loved every sentence! Interestingly, the author wrote the incredible Isola – which I also loved – but the two books could not be more different.

Say You’ll Remember Me. This was a perfect book for a road trip: easy to read, not complicated, happy ending. What more do you need? Two people fall madly in love but live far apart – can a long distance romance work? She is caring for a mother with dementia, he has a brand new veterinary practice and tons of debt. Can they make it work? Spoiler alert: of course they can. I liked how this book portrayed financial realities and also the difficulty of being a caregiver (note: mother with dementia is three years older than I am, lord have mercy). Please note the page about returning shopping carts.

Our road trip was a lot of fun. My mom enjoyed her gifts, including the apparently divisive vanilla scented lotions. Vanilla? You want vaNILLA? the fun-haired woman said to me, like I was stating a preference for BO mixed with skunk. We had a good time all around, plus, the snowstorms, cold weather, and gale-force winds took a break, and we had lovely warm temperatures. There was a lot of snow in the mountain passes, but the roads were clear and the driving was smooth.

It looks like a perfect week for gardening, we have lots of sunshine ahead of us. May the Fourth be with you, friends! xo

He had the same level of baffled bewilderment as when I talked about White Wine in the Sun, as well as when we watched a recent Joni Mitchell tribute and Both Sides Now was performed. I just don’t get why it makes you so sad, he said. It’s a song about…clouds?

My whole life, I have been very emotionally moved by music, very frequently to tears, and not always are those songs obviously wrenching to others. Some are – Landslide, for example – but others, like Is Somebody Singing or Miley Cyrus’ The Climb can destroy me emotionally because of specific memories associated with them. Usually I can hear at least a few lines or maybe an entire verse of my own personal tear-jerking songs before welling up, but I didn’t even make it to “chasing dollar” in Buy Dirt. I don’t even know if I made it to the lyrics, honestly, before dissolving.

A few days later, when he watched me emotionally decompensate just thinking about the song in our silent house, my Man of Action deleted it from his playlist. I’m sick of it anyway, he said, but I really know he just didn’t want me to accidentally hear it.

It IS a moving song, but I was much more emotionally fragile than I have been in a long while, for a few reasons. Typically every month before my period, I have a day or two of fatigue and disrupted sleep, a couple of hot flashes and an elevated resting heart rate. This month, I have had to date fourteen solid days of that with no period in sight, plus a very upsetting new symptom I had never had before: no appetite. This lasted for days. Not only did I have no appetite, but I had revulsion for food. I love food! I love to eat! I am, like Andy Sipowicz, an enthusiastic eater! But there I was, pushing my pasta around my bowl like a picky child, asking if it tasted weird to anyone else. This lack of appetite was accompanied by an intense, constant, and unquenchable thirst, to the point that I started googling am I diabetic, signs of kidney disease, and is HRT right for me?

This was reason number one for my emotional fragility: I was running on days of poor sleep, a racing heart rate, and almost no food, with a bloated and extended torso from all the water I was gulping down. Not to mention the hormones! Or, lack thereof, I guess.

But there was another reason I was fragile, and that is that my older son left on Saturday for an eight-week solo backpacking trip around Central and Eastern Europe. I am truly so happy for him; we encouraged him in this, and he planned it all so well. It’s something I really wish I had done at his age, and I think it will be such a great learning and growing experience for him. He’s seeing the world! The birdy is really flying far!

But the truth about it, it all goes by real quick. Every single month we all marvel that it’s a new month, how did that happen, time goes so fast, it’s almost May, can you believe it. My god, time really does go by real quick. My son is off seeing the world, all by himself. This feels like a whole new era, and it’s a wonderful new era, but the pages are flying off the calendar at cartoonish speeds.

I have loved every single age and stage my sons have gone through, every one of them. (Even when we were thirteen? my younger son asked. Yes. Maybe even especially then! I have so much love for the growth and expansion of those early teen years.) I am so proud of them; I can barely believe my good fortune. Sometimes I feel like I will literally explode, I love them so much. I will literally explode and all that will be left of me will be a pile of heart-shaped confetti.

When I was a kid I loved the book Jane of Lantern Hill, and I remember reading the part where Jane asks her mother if they could ever stop time. At the time, I thought that was absurd, why would anyone want to do that? I couldn’t get older fast enough. I wanted to be grown, to be autonomous, to be on to the next thing.

Well. I don’t want to stop time, but it all goes by real quick.

I have had some tests and I am confident my doctor, who is a brilliant and progressive young woman, will have some solutions for my physical self. In the meantime, the present moment is what we have, and so I will be over here, sweatily appreciating it. Thank you, body, for bringing me this far in life. Thank you for being a wonderland that is doing miraculous things as my estrogen plummets the depths of the ocean. Thank you, deodorants, for existing. Thank you, modern world, for giving me washing machines to wash my extremely sweaty jammies every day and for the clean tap water that I can gulp down to compensate for this excessive perspiration.

My son has landed safely in Europe to start his adventure. My best friend Tara (HI TARA), whose eldest daughter has travelled solo extensively, texted me with the uplifting message that we raised our children to be independent, so we shouldn’t be surprised when they are. We did! Look at them fly!

Watch their pencil marks and the grass in the yard all grow up.

Weekly Reading

Simple Abundance. My dear friend Michelle (HI MICHELLE) had mentioned this book to me last year, and I decided to start reading the short daily essays on my birthday over the next year. It was a really lovely, uplifting experience. I think it probably would have been a bit better had I started in January as the book intends – each month builds on the months before – but it was still a wonderful reminder to look at the simple things in life and take joy in them.

Wilderness Tips. his is a reread, but it’s been a while! There are some really great stories in this collection, and in my current state of mind I was particularly moved by the last paragraphs in the last story, Hack Wednesday.

When The Cranes Fly South. DO YOU WANT TO READ A SUPER SAD BOOK THAT WILL MAKE YOU STARE OFF INTO THE DISTANCE FOR A LONG TIME? This is the book for you! In retrospect, maybe not the best choice for this past, emotionally fragile week. Wow, it’s sad. An elderly man, whose wife is now in dementia care, lives alone with his elkhound dog, and has home care come in four times a day (this is Sweden, and such things are realities! Yay Sweden). His son, quite rationally and reasonably, thinks that the giant dog is really too much for the situation. After all, the old man sleeps most of the day, the dog gets very little exercise, and he’s worried the old man will fall when he’s taking the dog out. Very reasonable and rational. But also, the dog is the man’s main companion and great love. As the man snoozes the day away, he dreams about his long life; his loving mother and kind of awful dad, his move to Northern Sweden as a young man, meeting his best friend and his wife, and his son’s childhood. It is a very moving story about breaking cycles, new generations, love, and what matters in life. Fun fact: this is translated from the Swedish by Alice Menzies, and that was the name of one of my great-grandmas!

Zero-Sum. Before he left, my older son was telling us about his Managerial Economics course, and – as my husband and I both have Masters in Economics – I was extremely interested. It sounded like Managerial Economics was similar to Industrial Economics that I took back in 1996 or 1997. In any case, game theory featured heavily, which was very exciting to me. And then, my library holds came in and Zero-Sum was one of them! It was like my very own Baader-Meinhof phenomenon. Anyway, I have never before read Joyce Carol Oates, which seems like a grave omission. Every short story in this collection contains a zero-sum game, and it is absolutely fascinating and almost breathtaking in its literary creativity. The writing is just so smart, and every story is such a brilliant and interesting topic. Some of the stories were a bit dystopian/ horror based for me, but most of them were diabolically good.

I am going on my own, much less exotic adventure this week: a road trip to visit my parents. That is, if the weather-warning level spring snowstorms stop for a couple of days. Hopefully there won’t be any avalanches! In the meantime, take care of yourselves and I’ll see you next week – when it will be May. Can you believe it? xo

I did have a lovely birthday, with a trip to the garden centre for flowers, basil, tomatoes, and peppers. They have not been planted yet, but will be soon, and in the meantime all my little seedlings have sprouted, life is good. Strangely, on my birthday walk with Rex I did not encounter one person I knew. I ALWAYS have at least one conversation with walking regulars, and I was ready to tell them it was my birthday to receive good tidings for the day, but NOT ONE did I encounter. Next time I AM wearing that sandwich board.

Nicole’s Favourite Things: The Nifty and Fun Edition

Feet Don’t Fail Me Now

In addition to wearing the contenders for the Ugliest House Sandals Award, I have also embraced middle age and purchased items from Dr. Scholls, specifically designed to relieve pain from plantar fasciitis. I put a pair of these into my trail runners for my daily walks, and they really have helped.

Turn That Frown Upside Down

A few weeks ago I was running errands ahead of my pedicure appointment, and as I approached the young man at the liquor store counter, he gasped. Well! You look lovely! he said with genuine enthusiasm, to which I responded with appropriate gratitude for the compliment. I mean it! You are so beautiful. Look at you! Your hair, your eyes, everything. I felt like Amy Sedaris in Elf, when Buddy tells her that she’s so pretty, she could be on a Christmas card. I strutted out of there, swinging my bottles of tequila like John Travolta’s paint cans.

On the way to the salon, I was stopped at a red light and the men in the utility truck beside me started giving me the eye. Wow, I thought, I really have it going on today! I strutted into the salon and as the esthetician started Dremelling off my polish, she asked if I had grandkids.

A few points to consider: I am 51, and I look 51, and it would not be strange to have grandkids at this age. I also hope that one day I do have grandkids, what a gift that would be. I did think it was a bit of an odd question, but I don’t want to judge anyone who works in a salon and who has to make small talk day in and day out. I’ve said some weird things myself while teaching yoga. I did not think it was an offensive question in any way, and I did not take offense.

That was before I learned that the reason she asked was because she thought I was the grandmother of her teenage son’s best friend.

My feelings on that discovery are not unrelated to the feelings I had when I was plucking my facial hair, looking into my “daylight” 10x magnifying mirror and noticed three faint vertical lines going up my forehead, in between my eyebrows. At first I thought I had, somehow, made three perfect lines in my forehead serum, but no. These are permanent features. I have long accepted my horizontal lines, as they have evolved from a lifetime of raising my eyebrows or otherwise making happy faces.

But these lines seem to be a result of frowning, which I do not like.

In any case, I use The Ordinary Multi-Peptide HA Serum on my forehead every day. It doesn’t turn back time – nothing does, short of injections or surgery – but I do think it helps slow the line-developing process. Maybe I’m frowning more than I think I am! I will have to address that. First step: stop reading the news.

What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Stronger?

My friend Sharyl (HI SHARYL) has been an inspiration for many years now. She took me under her wing when I first started teaching yoga, and she had me assist, co-teach, and then take over her Yoga for Stroke Survivors class. That experience taught me more about bodies and how they move than my entire teacher training, it taught me how to teach a single pose in multiple ways for multiple abilities, all at the same time. Her goal was to get people to move without pain, and to feel good in their own bodies.

During the pandemic Sharyl started teaching yoga with small weights, and then she got into strength training, around the same time that I did. But she got REALLY into strength training; she is a woman of small stature who can dead lift 210 pounds. She posted a video of her doing a pull-up, and I started thinking: could I do that too?

Just before my fiftieth birthday, I made a loose goal of working towards doing a pull-up by my fifty-first birthday. And I am now 51 and I cannot do that. But I can do three assisted, using exercise bands under my feet as support.

Maybe next year! But I have come so far; when I first started I could only hang, straight-armed, for ten seconds. But I kept working on it and working on it, and I have seen so much progress. Maybe I never will get to a point where I can do them unassisted, but I have gotten so much stronger in the process. Also progress, not perfection, right?

Fueled By Cake

Everyone knows I love cake, and, to the amusement of my friends, I really love a grocery store sheet cake. My husband delivered!

Every Sunday I make a big dinner, complete with dessert, and sometimes that dessert is cake. Earlier in the month I had a craving for lemon cake, and so I made an angel food one. Fun fact: you can easily do this by substituting half the water in a typical angel food cake mix with lemon juice. I think it would be even better with some lemon zest, but alas, I had no lemons.

It was perfect with raspberries and a dollop of non-dairy whipped cream.

Channelling Mr. T

When I was about fifteen, a boy told me that I wore “more jewelry than Mr. T,” and I have taken that to heart as my personal esthetic ever since. It’s a good goal in life.

I have switched into my Spring Uniform, which typically is a short-sleeved top and jeans, as opposed to my Winter Uniform, which is a sweater and jeans. The move to the short sleeves is a significant one, though, because it means I can wear multiple bracelets on my left wrist, without getting them jammed in clothing.

Except for the chakra bracelet, which was given to me years ago by a yoga student, I bought all these in Vietnam at the floating market.

My look reminds me of when I was about thirteen, and I was low-key terrified of my friend Julie’s very stern German father (HI JULIE). He looked at me one day, me with my armful of jelly and friendship bracelets, and said, gruffly, Why do you wear so many bracelets? before staring me down. Eeep! I don’t know! When later Julie told her dad – in front of me! – that I was scared of him, he said, sternly, Why? I like Nicole. Upon that statement, he stared at me silently, while I wished I could melt into the floor.

Outfit of the Month

Behold the Spring Uniform!

The big smile on my face tells you that we were on our way to the garden centre! Short sleeved chakra tee, Silver jeans which are “boyfriend cut,” Skecher Mary Janes, and my beloved old Lululemon bag. I don’t really think I need a bag this size anymore, but I just cannot quit it.

Isn’t that yellow shrub pretty? Its next stage is green leaves and flowers. It delivers beauty year-round. I feel like that should be a segue into a discussion about seasons, seasons of life, perimenopause, and all the sweatiness, but I will leave that for another post. In the meantime, what were your Favourites this month? Tell me everything. xo

Several months ago, a bird decided it had enough of this cruel world, and kamikazed into our bedroom window. At least, I think that is what happened. I was startled to see a gigantic, bird-shaped splotch on the window, complete with feathers and, how shall I put this delicately, intestinal waste. I immediately ran downstairs and outside, but alas. I could not find the corpse. Possibly the bird did NOT shuffle off this mortal coil but instead survived, but I do not see how. Another possibility is that the body ricocheted far enough away that one of the resident coyotes had a little Circle of Life snack. The one thing I do know is that Rex did not eat it, as he did not have any of his own intestinal waste issues, Rex being a sensitive-stomached big galoompa.

However, this avian disaster occurred at the very start of the cold weather, which precluded the use of the pressure washer, and try as we might with long-handled squeegees, we could not clean it off. I have assuaged my feelings about the minor splodge that is still there by cleaning all the downstairs windows that I can reach with only my outstretched arm and a two-step ladder. I cope by averting my eyes when the sun is shining in that window which, since it’s west facing and I really only use the bedroom to sleep, fold the laundry, and have sex, I don’t see that often.

Heating Things Up

My friend Gigi (HI GIGI) had mentioned recently that she used the self-clean function on her oven, with great results. I have used the self-clean function exactly once, probably fifteen years ago. I thought it would be a great activity on a frigid, minus-30 January day in Calgary. This was not the very worst idea I have ever had, but it is up there, Steve. I did not realize that a) the house would be filled with terrible fumes and, due to the cold I was not able to open the windows without becoming hypothermic, and b) I am terrified of fire and the fact that the oven gets SO HOT was very frightening to me. I waited for the cycle to either finish or for me to perish in the house fire that would surely happen when the oven blew up.

Since then I have mostly used Easy-Off “fumeless” sprays and what my mother calls Elbow Grease to clean my oven, but since moving here almost three years ago I tried to use the Aqua Clean function on my new oven. My mother-in-law has this function and swore it was life changing, but either my oven is inferior or I cook much messier items because I don’t think it works well at all. I think it’s probably the latter; 80% of my oven use has to do with roasting vegetables that have been tossed in oil, which makes things stickier. After almost three years with this oven and dealing with the disappointment that is the Aqua Clean function, I am back with the Easy Off and Elbow Grease method.

Dirty Floors No More (or not much)

In addition to the windows and the oven, Rex also got a spring cleaning!

This will have positive trickle-down effects to the rest of the house. The fuzzier he is, the more dirt, sand, and gravel collects in his paws, to be slowly released throughout the house post-walk every day. He also loves rolling around in the grass, and his thick fur holds onto little leaves and grassy bits, also to be deposited randomly everywhere. I vacuum, and often mop, daily because otherwise we would be living in filth. I’m hoping his haircut will extend the period between vacuuming to every 36, or maybe even 48 hours. Of course, the first thing he did after I drove him home from the groomer’s was to roll around under the grapevines, meaning that his pristine cleanliness lasted exactly 17 minutes, possibly a new record. Well, as I say to my husband when he complains of dead patches in the grass, you can have spotless floors and a perfect lawn OR you can have a dog, and I CHOOSE JOY.

For a dog who really hates being wet, Rex loves the groomer. She is a tiny woman who probably weighs less than he does; she told me that after grooming dogs for 25 years, Rex is the first that she doesn’t have to harness or physically wrangle. She merely tells him to turn, and he does. I do not know how this happens, but everyone at the dog salon refers to Rex as the groomer’s “boyfriend.” When I phone, I can hear multiple voices in the background saying that her boyfriend is coming for a visit. Hilarity ensues. Listen, I am just happy Rex enjoys being groomed, so I just smile when the groomer greets him with a “Hello there, big man.” If it works, it works.

Weekly Reading

Three very buzzy books this week – but one did NOT deliver.

Half His Age. Ninety-nine percent of this book, which follows a 17-year-old girl and her affair with her high school English teacher, is heartbreakingly sad. Against the backdrop of the affair are bigger themes, like consumerism, intergenerational trauma, and acceptance of people for who they are. The ending was hopeful and the writing is fast-paced, almost frantic, which makes for an easy and engrossing read. I did appreciate and enjoy it, but it is full of very gross and graphic details, so be warned if you are prudish or squeamish.

Strangers: A Memoir of a Marriage. This memoir is a cautionary tale for all women, to make sure that they know what is going on financially in their marriage. Hoo boy. When we were travelling in Morocco, an older gentleman said to me of the people in the village, “We’re all the same the whole world round, we all just want to take care of our families, be safe, and to have a bit of fun once in a while.” He was talking about villagers who did not have a whole lot in the way of material possessions, to say the least, but I think it applies to everyone, even the very wealthy and privileged, to which social echelon the author belongs. She is the granddaughter of Babe Paley – shoutout to anyone who knows of the Swans of NYC – and was the recipient of generational wealth from both sides of her family, although the discovery of her father’s $40M debt when he died perhaps shows how inherited wealth can mean revert. Anyway, her husband of over 20 years left her a few weeks into the pandemic, in March 2020, and can we talk about all the marriages that ended during the pandemic? It was a real thing. So this man leaves her as he was having an affair, but just…leaves. No explanation. He doesn’t want access to their children. Just…nothing. The book revisits their lives together as she searches for a reason which, by the way, she never gets. She never gets a reason her husband left her, other than “I didn’t want to be married to you anymore.” I literally said, out loud, “NO DON’T DO THAT” many times reading this as she a) changed the prenup against the advice of her lawyer so that she would get NOTHING of any money accumulating throughout their marriage that wasn’t in joint names, b) doesn’t get involved in their finances, c) DRAINS HER TRUST FUNDS TO BUY THEIR APARTMENT AND SUMMER HOUSE AND PUTS IT IN BOTH THEIR NAMES. Don’t do that! Her husband accumulated millions of dollars throughout their marriage and, of course, put it all in his name so because of the prenup she was entitled to nothing. It’s easy to scoff and say that she’s so rich, she could just sell the homes once her husband leaves her with very little financially, but that’s not the point. The point is this woman was ruined emotionally and nearly ruined financially by what seems like a sociopath of a human. The book is nuanced, well-written, and poignant, and it comes to some beautiful conclusions. I couldn’t read it fast enough! I loved it. As a woman who gave up her career to take care of the children, I can really empathise with her. She trusted this man and he ruined her. ALWAYS KNOW WHAT IS GOING ON WITH THE FINANCES, PEOPLE.

Judy Blume: A Life. When I heard there was a biography of Judy Blume coming out, I did something I very rarely do: I preordered the hardcover. I waited, seething with excitement. Judy Blume! I love her! Then when it arrived a friend alerted me to some controversy surrounding it, namely that Blume was NOT endorsing it. The author says that Blume offered pages and pages of notes, almost all of which he rejected. I guess for his “artistic vision?” I don’t know what specifically Blume did not like about this book, but I am going to speculate that she is not endorsing it because it’s SO BORING. OMG. I would have DNF’d it but I BOUGHT THE HARDCOVER. And it was just the dullest read. I guess this is why I prefer memoir to biography, the latter often is just a dull factual read without any emotion. I’m so annoyed that I now have this EXPENSIVE book in my collection that I will never read again. Chalk this up as one of the most highly anticipated and ultimately disappointing book in my collection.

Tomorrow is my birthday! My first year as a 50+ woman has been great, honestly, and I’m looking forward to the year ahead. I hope you are all having a beautiful week. xo