Friday Fire

Happy Friday! At times, I felt like this week was dragging and yet now it feels to me like Friday has arrived out of nowhere. I will not complain. Weekends are always my favourite. Though I don’t work regular hours,  there is something about knowing that no one else even expects me to be working on weekends that make them extra special.

The week has been full. Of grant applications (still, and apparently never-ending). Of the joys of trying to estimate taxes and make appropriate contributions to RRSPs to offset taxes. Of new activities that fill my heart with joy. Of time with my favourite person and cat. Amidst all of this, let’s see what most lit me up (and I assure you it certainly was not the taxes):

1. Volunteering! Try as I might, I could not seem to find a suitable volunteer opportunity. Either the hours weren’t right or the type of work wasn’t right or I was simply rejected. Now it seems the universe was just holding off until the SPCA had some openings, because now I find myself with the most perfect of volunteering opportunities: hanging out with cats! Okay, I’m actually cleaning their cages and surrounding areas, which is much less glamorous, but when I’m done the actual work part, I am allowed to stay behind and play with the cats for the remainder of my shift. Sadly, this week there were very few cats for me to play with, which is actually a really good thing for the cats because it means many have been adopted. In a way, it is also a good thing for me, because the more cats are there, the more I will want to bring home all the cats.

2. French Bakery: We drove past a French bakery on the way to meet friends for dinner the other week, and I made a mental note to check it out. And then dragged my better half there first thing on Saturday morning, already knowing exactly what I would order: a perfectly portioned (likely for two, but if you’ve been reading for any length of time you know my sweet tooth knows nothing of portion sizes) caramel-smothered-chocolate-mousse filled entremet. I ate it in the car like a heathen and it was heavenly and I had zero regrets. We also bought several macarons and both the coffee and caramel macarons were beyond amazing. I shall return.

3. Nick Jonas on The Voice: Up until their most recent album, I couldn’t name a Jonas Brothers song if you asked me. Then I got hooked on “Sucker for You”, and then I forced my partner to watch the Jonas Brothers documentary on Amazon Prime.  And now, even though I still can’t name more than two Jonas Brothers songs, I am pro-Jonas Brothers. So when I heard Nick Jonas was going to be a judge on this season’s The Voice, I was pumped. We’re only two episodes into the season, but so far I am loving the addition. Spare me your too-cool-to-like-the-Jonas-Brothers. The boy can actually sing, and he makes for an entertaining judge/coach.

That’s all for this week. Wishing you all a wonderful weekend, one which features the start of a new month, the promise of Spring, and all that you want to experience.

Mid-Week Tangent Canada Reads Edition: We Have Always Been Here

Welcome to my third instalment in the Canada Reads series, in which I share my thoughts on  We Have Always Been Here, by Samra Habib.

This is the most torn I’ve been about the books I’ve read so far. I found Samra’s life story highly engaging. My challenge was that I wanted more. I felt at an arm’s length from her inner experience for most of the book. As someone who personally excels at cultivating distance with others, I picked up on it right away; this felt like it was written by a journalist maintaining  objective detachment.

To be fair, Samra is a journalist.  And honestly, I don’t mean any of this as a criticism of the book or author, but merely as a reflection of my desire to feel more deeply connected to her emotional and inner experience. In short, I wanted more; I wanted the intimacy of poetry in non-fiction. That’s a tall order, isn’t it? It may not even be a fair ask!

At the end of the day, I’d still recommend this book. I found Samra’s experience of finding her place in her home country, in her new country and within the LBGTQ community to be powerful.  Samra’s journey is complicated by her cultural heritage, her family dynamics, and her sexual orientation. Amidst all of this, she must grapple with deeply seated emotions that most of us struggle with in some form, like intense guilt and shame.  It is a reminder of our sameness rather than our differences.

Ultimately, I connected to the strong message of acceptance, both of others and most importantly of ourselves. One of my favourite short passages is advice that Samra was given by friends along her journey: “you have everything you need. I can’t wait for people to see what I’ve known all along–that you are amazing.”

If all of us could see this about ourselves and about those around us, the world would be a much better place.

Friday Fire

We had a holiday on Monday and yet this work week felt longer than most. In one of my roles, I was gathering information for a government grant application and let me just tell you that few things trigger my frustration more than government paperwork. In other words, I am excited for the weekend.

Lest you think my week was a dark and troubling time all around, there were definitely pockets of light. Here’s what lit me up this week:

1. Sunshine runs (again): I know, I know. I waxed poetic about sunshine winter runs last week, but I had two more absolutely brilliant sunshine runs this week. In particular, one lifted me from the depths of government grant despair so much so that I honestly felt like it salvaged my whole day. That’s powerful.

2. Hand pies from local bakery: Our local bakery makes delightful jam-filled hand pies, and the only thing (in my opinion) that keeps them from being perfect is that they need just a little more sweetness. This week, we took matters into our own hands. I whipped up a simple vanilla glaze to drizzle on top of the warm hand pie, and it was the closest I will ever get to a home-made pop-tart (because I refuse to deal with making my own pastry). It was heaven.

3. Most Stuf Oreos: Last year, I found the elusive Most Stuf Oreos in a local store and proceeded to demolish an entire package in short order. Then they disappeared, and I resigned myself to a life without Most Stuf Oreos…until this week. THEY ARE BACK, PEOPLE! And they are just as glorious as I recall. I swear the filling is softer than standard Oreo filling, and has a slightly different flavour. These two qualities combined are what make these a cream-filled cookie lovers’ dream. I won’t horrify you with my preferred method for eating Most Stufs which, to your absolute disgust, involves further stacking of the frosting centers. Suffice it to say, I am a happy camper.

4. Reflections:  Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been drifting from some of my spiritual and reflective work. I still have daily practices, but I had taken a break from some of my deeper readings to give myself time and space to internalize the work before moving forward. I’ve slowly started delving back in this week and have had a couple moments of incredible clarity on what’s been impacting my energy lately: the fear of getting the things I want. It seems counterintuitive to fear what we want, and yet I can see where the uncertainty of what life would look like if I were to get what I want is so scary that I haven’t been going there. I’ve served myself a giant truth bomb and am working on letting go of that fear.

So there you have it.  Into my weekend, I take this reflection and also take my gratitude for the progress I’ve made on my journey so far. With that, I wish you all a weekend of peace, as much (or as little!) thoughtful contemplation as you desire, and intentional choices to spend your time doing the things you love with people you love. Happy weekend, y’all.

Mid-Week Tangent Canada Reads Edition: Small Game Hunting at the Local Coward Gun Club

Here we go! This is my second read of the five shortlisted 2020 Canada Reads books. If you missed last week, you can catch it here.

This week we have Small Game Hunting at the Local Coward Gun Club by Megan Gail Coles.

Honestly, I am not sure how I feel about this novel. There was a lot I loved about it–the writing style, the way it all takes place within one day, a few powerful passages that captured perfectly the essence of a character’s situation. I was gripped by certain characters and stories, to the point of not being able to put the book down. I felt the author excelled at revealing just enough shared humanity in even the most unlikeable of characters to make them readable, for you to want them to see the good that exists deep inside them, even if they had long since lost sight of it for themselves.

The novel also tackles brutal subjects, like violence and sexual assault, and I appreciated the author approaching these topics unapologetically, with pointed clarity and a definite perspective.  This passage was one of my favourites, both for its message and the direct, simple perfection of its language:

…boys will be boys.

But really, rightly, that statement should be disputed every time it is used to dismiss the very genuine and deserved complaint from girls just trying to survive as girls in spaces where even mothers are used against them. Mothers must stop competing with their daughters. Daughters do not make men mistreat them. It is not right or fair to punish daughters further out of envy. Keeping the dangerous path dangerous will not make them better women but hurt them still in the same sad ways. 

I mean, wow.

So why am I uncertain about this book?

When it comes down to it, I suppose my uncertainty is more a reflection of my own preferences than anything about the book itself: I wanted to feel more hope among the cast of downtrodden and broken characters. There were glimmers of light in each life, but none that evolved into anything beyond a glimmer. Personally, I struggle with novels in which darkness, loss, hurt and suffering seem to triumph over hope, love and compassion.

There were moments when I thought we’d get there, where that element of shared humanity shone through, such as this: “And the feeling they bask in feeling is sold to them by organizers as excitement for the draw when the feeling they are actually feeling is unity. They are together, experiencing an experience together. What they are delighting in is shared humanity. This euphoria they seek out in far-flung regions of the country is so they feel less far-flung.” But then the moment would pass and we’d be right back into hopelessness.

In the end, the characters’ recognition of their oneness as humans was the experience I was missing, and for that I finished this book feeling just a little unsettled and unsatisfied.

Friday Fire

Happy Friday and happy Valentine’s Day! You can hate on Valentine’s Day all you want but I will always opt into a holiday that promotes extra chocolate consumption. Whether you’re in love or not, chocolate is always a good thing.

Let’s take a look at what lit me up this week, shall we?

1. Catching up with old friends: One of my bestest friends from one of my favourite periods of life was within an hour of us this week and we got to see them not once, but twice. It had actually been a couple years since I’d seen her and yet it was like no time at all had passed. That is the mark of a good friendship, and my heart is full.

2. Winter winery visits:  Okay, so in terms of wine selection it may not be an optimum time to visit wineries. Lots of varietals are sold out by this point. This is precisely why we rarely visit wineries this time of year.  But this week we took our friends to a few wineries and I am a winter winery visit convert. We had amazing service because there was no one there. We got extra samples, didn’t pay for most tastings, and learned infinitely more about all of the wines than we normally would because staff had the time for us. It was my best winery experience in ages.

3. Amazing Sunshine Run: I only got out for one run this week, but it was a doozy in the best possible way. The sun was out, the air was cool, and I was in the zone. Sure, I had to dodge some ice, but I managed to emerge unscathed, feeling pumped for the day and in love with cold, sunshine-y winter days.

4. Canada Reads: I’m writing about each book separately so I won’t speak to specific books here, but I am loving the selection of books. They’re different than what I would choose on my own, not because the content or topics aren’t of interest, but because I would never have visibility into these books had they not been promoted through Canada Reads. Canada Reads provided a platform for these authors, and it makes me think of all the books that exist out there that I will never hear about because no one is promoting them.

With that, I’m off to enjoy my own Valentine’s Day, which involves cooking dinner at home, a snazzy new bottle of wine we picked up during this week’s wine tastings and, quite likely, chocolate. May your weekend be full of things you love, experiences you crave, and deeply relaxing downtime.

Happy weekend, y’all.

Mid-Week Tangent Canada Reads Edition: From the Ashes

It’s time to kick off my Canada Reads series, in which I read all of the shortlisted books and offer my take, and in which we eventually see if I choose the same ‘winner’. Are you excited? I am.

From the Ashes by Jesse Thistle is the first read of the Canada Reads shortlisted books. Here are my thoughts.

Whoa.

Yes, that was a one word reaction, and it perfectly sums up my overall thoughts on this memoir.

At times, reading this book was like a sucker punch to the gut, the events and inner thoughts so painful that they seemed to suck the air right out of me. Jesse’s life has so many moments that are so shocking that I felt like it was fiction. It felt too extreme, too full of heartbreak and tragedy, to possibly be someone’s life. Jesse defied the odds like a cat with nine lives, as though some higher power had its watchful eye on him determined that he should find his way. Although it was often dark and difficult to read, ultimately this is a memoir of resilience and hope, and for me this is what made it a thoroughly gripping read.

I found myself connecting deeply to our shared humanity, that part of all of us that needs love and forgiveness, from others but perhaps more importantly from ourselves.  I thought of the ways that we can want nothing more than to be accepted and love, and yet push all of that away when we feel undeserving of it.  Jesse fought against his own light, the belief that he had anything to offer anyone, and in a way many of us do the same thing. We can become beaten down by the sum of our experiences.

For some of us, the ways in which we cope with the fear of our light and goodness is just more ‘socially acceptable’. We put up walls or pursue material goods to fill our void, or perhaps become addicted to things that are more easy to manage in daily life, like food or technology. For Jesse and for some like him, this can take a turn into harsher addiction and crime, which ultimately resulted in his homelessness and a lengthy battle to get clean, to work through his inner demons, to recognize his worth.

Regardless of how our choices manifest, the end result is the same: we remain closed off to ourselves and what we have to offer the world until the time at which something compels us to examine our demons more fully. What I loved about Jesse’s writing was his brutal honesty about how difficult (and long) a process it was for him to fully engage in looking inward. So many times he encountered others who tried to show him his light, and he would make one step forward only to stumble backwards, often in the most epic of ways. His vulnerability is a shining example of his healing, and something we can all learn from as we struggle with our own variations of not being good enough.

I found this to be an incredibly engaging and emotionally rich read, and one in which the writing is no-frills, no-holds-barred. I was hooked.  It’s hard to say whether any of you will have the same response because book tastes are so inherently personal, so I will leave you with one of my favourite short passages, which to me speaks so eloquently to our common humanity.

“All us criminals start out as normal people just like anyone else, but then things happen in life that tear us apart, that make us into something capably of hurting other people. That’s all any of the darkness really is–just love gone bad. We’re just broken-hearted people hurt by life.”

Friday Fire…on a Saturday

Some Fridays are easier than others. I admit that this week I struggled with Friday Fire, not because I haven’t had a good week, but simply because I didn’t feel like writing it. I don’t know about you, but sometimes simply feeling like I ‘have to’ do something is enough to make my either dread it or avoid it all costs. So I didn’t write it, and now it’s a Saturday Friday Fire and the world is going to survive this minor glitch.

Here’s what lit me up this week:

1. Surprise homemade cookies: Earlier this week, I was in the basement doing my at-home workout, when I heard incessant banging and slamming upstairs. Had my partner discovered a rodent that he had decided to violently smash to smithereens? On the contrary, I discovered that he was violently smashing a large quantity of dark chocolate into smithereens. To make me cookies. As a surprise. Life is good, my friends. Also, the cookies were beyond good. Baked goods are undoubtedly one of my love languages.

2. The best homemade burrito I’ve ever made: Truthfully, this burrito is what inspired me to finally get around to writing this Friday Fire post one day late. I was singing its praises, inside my own head, as one is wont to do when she cannot stop thinking about her homemade burrito. It was perfect. It’s base was leftover pulled pork that I made with a pretty kickass dry rub, if I do say so myself. Which I then mixed with refried beans, corn, black olives, and cheese. Did you notice something? No rice. My biggest beef with burritos (no pun intended) is the abundance of rice. Rice is a waste of my time. I loathe it. It interferes with the amount of valuable fillings I can consume at one time. Anyway, my rice free burrito was then liberally topped with salsa and salsa verde and homemade guacamole and it was both the best thing I ate all week and the highlight of my Friday.

3. Peace: Very few of you reading this know me at all, so you know not the decades of crippling anxiety and unrest that I considered normal. I always had to be moving, doing something, making progress, because if I wasn’t I would start to think and then worry and then panic. Over nothing.  This past week I’ve realized how at peace I am with quiet, with slow days and fewer tasks, with not feeling the need to fill every moment to keep myself distracted from myself. It’s not new as much as I hadn’t realized how much I’ve come to appreciate the quiet contentment that comes with being at peace.  And no, I didn’t just throw this one in so that you all don’t think the only thing that lit me up this week is food.

Happy weekend everyone. I sincerely hope that you find peace and calm for as much time as possible for the remainder of this weekend. Seek it. Breathe deeply and let go of the need to always be doing. I’ll catch ya next week.

Mid-Week Tangent: Bookstravaganza Canada Reads Edition

Do you ever feel like you get in a book rut? Like you’re constantly turning to the same authors? Like you don’t know a reputable source of recommendations that will align with your own personal tastes and reading preferences? I have been in that slump, but I’ve recently discovered the antidote and have reignited my book inspiration.

I have my small town’s lack of tolerable radio stations to thank for this. You see, we have roughly five radio stations that come in semi-clearly in my town, all of which I have deemed terrible for a variety of reasons. Either they play music that I personally don’t enjoy, or they play perfectly fine music…over and over and over (and over) again. As a result, I listen to more CBC radio than I ever have in my entire life.

About a week and half ago, I happened to catch a broadcast about Canada Reads, which is apparently an annual thing, but which I have never heard of because I had never listened to CBC regularly. Anyway, Canada Reads is basically a book competition. Five short-listed books duke it out to be named the best. As part of the kickoff, champions for each book got 30 seconds to sing the praises of their chosen book.  The first book sounded great. Then the second book sounded great. Then the third. You get the picture. By the end of the segment, I’d decided I was going to read all of the short-listed books.

Book inspiration,  done.

Now I’m sitting on a pile of five new books, committed to sharing my thoughts on each leading up to the selection of the Canada Reads winner mid-March. It’s an ambitious timeline, for sure, so we’ll see how it turns out. Will I pick the same winner as Canada Reads? Only time will tell.

If you’d like to join in on the fun, check out the short list here.

Stay tuned for my take on each book in the coming weeks. Now it’s time to get my read on.