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

Speaking of not mentally rehearsing for doom, the news continues to be objectively horrible and frankly terrifying. Recently both my friends Suz and Bijoux (HI SUZ HI BIJOUX) gently reminded me that whatever happens in 2026, our great-grandmothers had it much worse. I think there’s room for both feelings: gratitude to be living in the modern age where we have such luxuries as the vote and refrigerators, and sadness that the current masters of the universe are insane, evil clowns who value human lives just slightly more than they do mosquitoes.

But Suz and Bijoux are right; my great-grandmothers’ lives were extremely hard and full of tragedy. One of my great-grandmothers died in childbirth, and another had a number of unspeakable hardships imposed on her by the various men in her life. And the only thing worse than having oppressive, unkind men was to have no man at all – my grandma was widowed in her thirties, with no money and six kids aged twelve and under. Life was, to put it mildly, not easy for her. Two of my grandmas had babies who died, and all of these women lived through the Depression and World War II.

Meanwhile, here I am, brushing my dog’s teeth.

They also had to do laundry by hand, and if there is anything that should make us grateful to live in this moment in time, it’s the invention of the washing machine. Of all the household chores, the laundry is the absolute easiest to deal with: dirty clothes are put into one machine and then, wet clean clothes are transferred to another. It’s magical! It’s a miracle of the modern age!

My husband’s grandmother, in whose house we now reside, worked for a time at the laundry in the hospital, and if there is a more physically taxing, miserable job than that, I don’t know what it is. Just think of all those heavy soiled sheets and blankets and towels, being washed by hand on a scrub board, and then wrung out and hung to dry. Imagine the state of your hands. Just doing laundry for a household would be difficult enough, what with the hauling and heating of water, and the misery that would be diapers. But working as a laundress in a hospital setting? I’m exhausted just thinking about it.

Adjacent to the daily appreciation I feel for my washing machine – “He worked hard, Grandpa.” “So do washing machines.” – is the immense gratitude I have for running water. Isn’t it amazing that we have it? So many things have to happen in order for us to have clean, running water: scientists work to ensure that it is safe to drink and workers put that science into action, infrastructure is conceived, built, and maintained to transport that water to our homes, which are plumbed and equipped with heaters so that, with the merest touch of a finger, we are served with water whenever we want it and at the exact temperature we desire. It’s truly a daily miracle. For so many centuries, this was not the usual thing. For so many centuries, a simple bath was an enormous undertaking.

My life is soft and luxurious by any standard, but in comparison to my ancestresses, I might as well be the Princess of Wales.

What was good about them? my mother-in-law once said in response to someone’s pining for the good old days. She’s not wrong. There have been rapid technological changes not just in my lifetime, but also in that of my children’s, who were born before smartphones, streaming, and the maps feature in the car. I remember the wild feeling of being able to pause live television, and the idea that if I like a song, I can simply listen to it on my phone. But just think of the advancements that came into being in our grandmothers’ lives. For one thing: indoor plumbing. Imagine the enormous quality-of-life boost that our grandmothers had when they went from outhouses to indoor bathrooms. I am not sure where this fits on the scale of running water to washing machines, but it’s up there, Steve. A few years ago, I checked the website for the campground at which my family reunion was to be held, and I noticed that they proudly advertised modern flush toilets. It was honestly a selling point to me. Who wants to live without modern flush toilets? Not me. Now it’s become a family joke; whenever my husband books accommodation for a trip, he lets me know that there are modern flush toilets.

I am an optimist by nature, but I do need to take care not to veer into toxic positivity. Earlier this week I wondered if we were indeed going to see a nuclear war, and at least we have toilets was not as cheering as one might think it would be. If my obsessive listening to The Rest Is History has taught me anything, it’s that there have always been despots and atrocities, there have always been men in power who behave terribly, and everything passes. Everything passes, and hopefully we learn and grow, globally. I listened to three episodes on Operation Barbarossa and the Battle of Stalingrad, and all I could think of was Stalin versus Hitler. Stalin versus Hitler! I need say no more, we can all draw our own parallels. I will leave it there and go pour myself a glass of water from the miracle that is my kitchen tap.

Weekly Reading

Stay With Me. This book was a wild ride, and I was here for it. Set in Nigeria against the backdrop of political instability and military coups and resulting dictatorships, it is the story of a couple who have been unable to have a baby. The man’s family decides it’s time for him to have a new wife, and pressures him into a polygamous marriage. The only way for this polygamous marriage to be dissolved is for the first wife to become pregnant – which she does, in kind of a shocking twist. The shocking twist gets stranger as the book goes on. I liked this book a lot but it’s definitely a twisted story. I read a surprising number of books that are set in Nigeria, and every time, I feel grateful to be in Canada.

Any Other Family. I picked this book up on a whim and I’m glad I did. The premise is a bit complicated: a young and incredibly fertile woman has four children who she has chosen to put up for adoption, due to her youth. The four children are adopted among three sets of parents, and the birth mother is involved. It’s all like a big extended family. While the three families are on vacation, the birth mother calls to tell them that she is, once again, pregnant, and will also be giving this one up for adoption. The story is about how the three adoptive mothers cope with the news and with the newly expanding family; it is a triple POV story. Despite the confusing and somewhat unbelievable premise, I was immersed immediately and very invested in the outcome. I kind of wish we could have seen the birth mother’s POV, but maybe that could be a follow-up book. This was really well written and completely engrossing.

The spring air really does give me a feeling of hope and optimism; my little arugula seeds are sprouting, and flowers are popping up everywhere. Now, will I be devastated from opening my news app as soon as I publish this? Maybe! But at least we have washing machines. xo

I had something in mind that I had been pondering about for months, but there is something you must know about my husband: he is a Man of Action. I tell him nothing until I am ready for Things To Move, if you know what I am saying. Some examples of things that I spoke about casually and that materialized fairly rapidly are the Peloton and our home gym, a trip to Morocco, more closet space, a new house, every small appliance in our kitchen, and garden beds. I had only to say I really like raised garden beds and then, like a cartoon character leaving a pile of dust in its wake, my husband was out sawing and hammering and shovelling soil into the resulting six beds that he made with his own hands, erecting fencing material around it to keep out the deer.

So I didn’t immediately tell him what I was thinking, which was that Noelle, my beloved but non-blooming Christmas cactus, was at the end of her life, along with her sister and shelf-mate, Stella the star plant, who never really recovered from her move here in 2023. Some of you may be thinking so what, plants die but you are not seeing the depths of my feelings on this subject. Noelle is symbolic of many things: my friendship with Denise, who gifted her to me when she moved out of the country (HI DENISE), my relationship with my younger son, who is the same age as Noelle, and my entire life prior to moving here. You might be thinking that this is a lot to put on a houseplant, and you might be right.

In any case, I knew. I knew the way you know about a good melon, but in this case it was the way you know that a part of you has changed forever and life must, as it does, go on.

And so I bought the two-pack of jade plants, after telling my husband that It Was Time. To his credit, he did not express the glee I’m sure he felt at not having to see the slowly-dying plants every day. He asked me several times if I was sure, was I ABSOLUTELY SURE that I was ready, and I was. He took them out to the shed, never to be seen again.

Shortly after, my younger son came home from work, to find me silent and trembling in the kitchen, chopping vegetables in a deeply sorrowful way. Tears sprang to my eyes and my voice cracked as I told him the fate of Noelle and Stella. He nodded very seriously and then said, so gently, the way you might speak to a very sad child, Those new plants look nice. Are they twins or just sisters? Twins, I shakily told him. Do they have names? Jane and Jennifer, I said. Those are nice names, he said, while I burst into tears at the thought of Noelle and Stella, alone at the bottom of the compost.

The twins are beautiful, as are the rest of my plants, of which I have probably pathologically intense attachment to.

Alice, the aloe, was given to me as a mere sprig from Aunty C (HI AUNTY C) and has since grown into a happy monster. She resides on the kitchen windowsill beside Eva, the snake plant.

The other, much larger, snake plant is Sabrina, who enjoys her spot by the piano, and the gnomes who live with her.

Christy, the unknown plant given to me at Christmas from my friend Darlene (HI DARLENE) was covered with tiny white flowers when she arrived. A few months later, she shed her flowers and started to establish a lot of new growth, so much so that I think she’s going to need a new pot.

Beside her is Pippa, the pepperpot plant, who is a recent and much-loved addition to our home. My friend Tara (HI TARA) brought her as a hostess gift only a couple of weeks ago.

Finally, Anna the amaryllis was given to me by my friend Sandi (HI SANDI). After she bloomed I cut her back, and now she’s all leafy again. I’m going to try to get her to rebloom next year and will hopefully not have some kind of breakdown if she dies.

There is no Becoming. I Have Become a Crazy Plant Lady. I refer to the plants collectively as The Girls, unless I’m talking to one of my sons, in which case I refer to them as Your Sisters. Even for me, this seems unhinged, yet I am not willing to make any changes to make myself seem more sane. There are worse things than being a Crazy Plant Lady, and, in any case, gardening season has begun and I have started planting a few rows of seeds in the aforementioned handmade garden beds. In other words, Crazy Plant Lady is taking her show outside.

Weekly Reading

I devoured this book that follows an Australian woman living in London over a ten year period. If you know me, you know that “the extraordinariness of ordinary life” is my favourite kind of book, and that is this – relationships and motherhood and finding oneself across the political backdrop of the UK from 2013-2023. There is a truly incredible cast of characters, and the book is hilariously funny and also incredibly moving, all at the same time. I doubled over crying laughing a few times, only to have my breath taken away by the emotional depth a few pages later. I loved this so much.

“It’s not a whorehouse. It’s a whorehome.” 

Workhorse. I am mixed. The author worked at Vogue for seven years in the early 2000s, which is exactly the time period of this book about an absolutely atrocious slob of a young woman with zero moral compass and questionable personal hygiene who – despite those things and also her complete inability to converse like a normal, non-cringey person – lands and keeps a job at a high-prestige magazine (i.e., Vogue). On the plus side, there are a lot of juicy inside-baseball details about magazine culture during that time, in which I am genuinely interested. On the minus, OMG this is long. It is WAY too long. At 552 pages, it could have been cut in half and been a snappy, exciting book. The plot is good! The ending is good! If it was cut back, it would be very good! As it is, it is a “tell, not show” book, a writing style which I do not admire, and it is all a little on the nose. Also, in addition to the immense, unneeded length, there are a lot of weird little editing misses: girls referred to by their hair colour, which changed from one paragraph to the next, someone graduating from Columbia when the paragraph before says that person went to UPenn, that kind of thing. Disbelief must be suspended as the main character not only does not look the part (i.e., not only is she a cheaply-dressed hot mess, she is a size six, which in Vogue world is just not acceptable), but she lies on her resume and although there is a hint that there might be repercussions, that thread never gets picked up. No matter. If you’re into juicy details about early 2000s magazine culture, and if you want to settle in with a doorstop of a book, this is for you! Like I said, the plot IS good and I liked the ending.

Wherever You Go, There They Are. This was published in 2017, and as I read it I recalled that the 2010s were a really hot time for books of essays written by B-and-C list celebrities. You don’t see them much anymore, or at least, I don’t. Probably they all have podcasts instead. Anyway, many of these essays were a big dull to me, but there was an absolutely killer one about MLMs, which is another thing that was hit in the 2010s and I don’t see much of these days. Thankfully! I haven’t had a “hey girl” message on Facebook from an old schoolmate for a long while. I admit I picked up this book about the author’s dysfunctional family thinking “I’ll see you and I’ll raise you” but no. She wins.

Have a beautiful week, friends! xo

This hilarity is at the edge of my limit when it comes to April Fool’s. I hate jokes that come at other people’s expense, and so I very much dislike pranks, which often feel mean-spirited and unkind. Also, they can backfire. I felt vindicated in my general loathing of pranks when a friend told me about removing the filling from Oreo cookies and replacing it with toothpaste, thinking her kids would immediately spit out the concoction and laugh at her antics. Instead, the kids ate all the tampered cookies. I’m no doctor, but probably we shouldn’t be consuming that much toothpaste? And I could see myself falling for this as I love the taste of mint. Anyway. April Fool’s! I find it SO dumb at best, and potentially hazardous at worst.

Up On Cripple Creek. I was telling an elderly couple about my leash mishap and fall, and the gentleman asked which side I fell on. I assumed he was talking about what side of my body, but he meant what side of the pathway; i.e., the creek side or the non-creek side. I fell on the non-creek side.

After he asked that, I started to have some weird post-mildly-traumatic stress thinking. I could really visualize an alternate scenario in which I was on the creek side of the path, and ended up tumbling down the very steep bank into the icy cold water, breaking bones and drowning my phone. Like, I could really SEE it, and now I can’t unsee it, and I am guiding Rex to the opposite side of the path at all times because WHAT IF. And THEN I started seeing a scenario in which I was being watched and filmed, because of course people are interested in the fascinating and action-packed way Rex and I plod along every morning, and the video of me flying through the air and landing in the creek, hitting everything possible on the way down, becomes a viral sensation and I turn into Pete from Mad Men.

Feeling All Right. Other than this weird mental imagery, I seem to have recovered from my fall. In other words, my sitz bone is no longer bruised and painful. Happily, my plantar fasciitis seems to be abating as well, after three weeks of intense foot stretching, ball rolling, and icing, along with a steady rotating diet of Advil and Tylenol. It probably would have gotten better quickly if I stayed off it entirely, but we all know that’s not going to happen. I cannot even imagine the mental state I would be in without my daily constitutional, not to mention Rex.

Rex does have a bed – several beds, in fact – but when I am reading on the couch he wedges himself between it and the coffee table. I was marvelling to the guys about how calm and mellow Rex is, and they looked at me like I had just eaten a shoe. After a brief silence, they all started to talk at once about how Rex is NOT a calm and mellow dog, and that I only think that because we walk 5-7 km daily prior to 9 am. I suppose this is correct. Again I started imagining alternate scenarios in which I shatter bones by falling into the creek and Rex DOESN’T get his daily walk and omg you guys, I must stop thinking of this alternate universe.

Boogie Shoes. Part of my plantar fasciitis recovery process has been wearing sandals in the house, as opposed to my usual bare or sock feet. I think it’s really helpful and also, I cannot help but feel like the guy wearing crocs and socks.

At least I’m not leaving the house like this.

Rich Girl. My friend Hannah (HI HANNAH) sent me this:

Because I am a woman of great privilege, I texted her this photo from Superstore.

LOOK WHO WON THE LOTTERY Hannah replied, because I am a Fancy Rich Lady who buys Mini-Eggs and who will be making them into little nests today.

Also, I cannot think of the word “nest” without thinking about the couple’s therapy scene in Old School, where Frank talks about panties and then, when his wife makes a noise of disgust, says “I thought…I thought we were in the Trust Tree, are we not? In the nest?”

I hope you all have a lovely weekend, and that you can splash out on Mini-Eggs or similarly ridiculously priced Easter treats. xo

How the rat shuffled off this mortal coil was a mystery, as it did not seem injured in any way, other than being dead, and how it came to be lying in the middle of a very wide walkway was also a significant unknown. Prior to my reverie about the wonder of the natural world, I had been listening to a podcast episode about the book 1984. The hosts had just gotten to the part about Winston and the cage full of rats, and I did wonder, absently, if I had somehow caused this dead rat to materialize with my own thoughts. Am I manifesting dead animals now? Am I moving them onto the walking path with my mind?

In addition to the horror and the question about manifestation, I also had gratitude, as I hurried Rex away, for two things: a) that Rex isn’t Barkley, who would have surely eaten the rat, and b) that this didn’t happen earlier in the week, when we had a leash mishap.

On Monday – Rex’s fifth birthday – we had an incident which was much less psychologically traumatizing, but significantly more painful physically. We were walking along when I saw approaching us a gentleman I have seen many times before, accompanied by his very reactive dog. Rex is generally either friendly or disinterested when we encounter another dog, unless that dog is reactive, at which point he becomes Giant Angry Rex.

So I brought him in close to me. I use a waist leash, so I can really put my body weight into controlling 102 fuzzy pounds. I started speaking softly to him as we started to pass, and probably it would have been fine had the other dog not suddenly lunged towards us, snarling and snapping. Rex lunged back and at that moment, the clasp of his leash broke, and the sudden release caused me to catapult backwards, not unlike a cartoon character. I landed, full force, on my right sitz bone, halfway down the slope off of the walking path.

It was kind of a disaster. The man called out Sorry! Are you okay? but couldn’t help me, because his dog was going bananas, and now Rex was loose. Fortunately, the man hurried away and Rex realized I was down for the count. He sat beside me, Lassie-like, until I could get back on my feet. If I had landed slightly differently, I likely would have fractured my tailbone, but as it was, I just bruised myself. It reminded me of the strength-training adage thick thighs save lives in terms of staving off osteoporosis, but in this case it was juicy booty to the rescue. Since it happened so quickly, I didn’t try to break my fall, which was fortunate, as in breaking my fall I would have probably broken, or at least sprained, my wrist.

Another issue now arose. The clasp, which was probably slowly wearing out over time, was completely broken on Rex’s leash, and now we were halfway through a 5km loop. I couldn’t really have him unleashed, so I had to jerry-rig his leash around his harness and hope for the best. If he had pulled – or encountered any kind of dead animal, rat or similar – my tenuous hold on him would probably have, like hell, broken loose.

Of course I immediately purchased a new leash the moment we got home.

Between a flare of plantar fasciitis in my right foot and an extremely sore right sitz bone, it’s been a bit of a painful week. The seated part of my yoga practice has been tricky, to say the least! But it’s a vindication for strength training, which I hate, but do grudgingly for my bone health. I guess I’ll keep at it, grimly lifting and lunging and doing all those boring things, just in case I end up flying through the air again.

Weekly Reading

After rereading The Age of Innocence, I realized that I had never read The House of Mirth! I think it is the best Wharton – it follows Lily Bart, a woman whose face is truly her fortune, and who keeps trying to punch above her weight, socially-speaking. It’s a brilliant illustration of the plight of the woman without independent means, and how marriage was, ultimately, an economic decision. I really loved this dramatic depiction of the downfalls associated with not marrying wealth while young and beautiful, and how Lily’s worth was, ultimately, tied up in her appearance and social standing.

I went to get the mail this weekend, and what awaited me there could have knocked me over with a tiny feather quill.

My dear friend Michelle (HI MICHELLE) had sent me her Jane Austen figurine! And because such a lady cannot travel unaccompanied, she was escorted by these two fellows:

I don’t actually feel worthy of such generosity, but I will take care of her – and the gnomes – with all my heart. Thank you, Michelle! What a lovely, unexpected joy!

I can hardly believe that we are at the end of March – I hope it’s lamb-like for all of you. Take care, friends. xo