Monthly Archives: February 2021

About Small Talk

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I went to the grocery store this morning for some basics: bananas (because: BANANAS), cream for my coffee, some pasta and a tomato for tonight’s supper. I don’t usually go to this particular grocery store out of the two in my small town – it’s a whole five minutes further by car and that’s usually enough of a deterrent, but I also don’t think the loss leaders are very enticing. And finally, I don’t find the cashiers there overly… well, happy to see me. Not me, specifically, just me as a customer in general.

Except for today. As I unfolded my re-useable grocery bag to scarf away my purchases, the cashier became overly animated about the fact that my bag sported a Cookies By George logo. She positively gushed about how much she loved those cookies – which I confess I also have a weakness for, so much so that I try to donate blood at the Canadian Blood Services location near the U of A in Edmonton because they (pre-Covid) usually serve Cookies By George leftovers. Which I feel no guilt in eating after trading in a pint of my lifeblood.

A couple of things took me by the surprise. First, was the gushing. My previously unengaged food checker suddenly developed a personality and we were bonding over (just the thought of ) a yummy treat. My trip to the grocery store had become like reminiscing about a holiday with its standard observance for consumption of chocolate eggs or shortbread cookies or pumpkin spice lattes.

The second thing was more surprising. I was almost moved to tears by the whole cookie conversation because: COVID. I’m just so tired of the anonymity of wearing masks, the 6-foot distant conversations, the leaning away and the crossing of streets. I am missing small talk and the clerk suddenly disclosing the cookie thing made me like her a little more.

Now, to be clear, I’m not tired of following the rules for the safety of all concerned, including myself. I just am missing the nuances of our Pre-Covid Life: the jostling of elbows in a crowd, the passing of the peace in church, the easy hugs from family and sometimes virtual (the pre-pandemic kind of virtual) strangers. Post-Covid Life is a little less spicy, less interesting and less filled with inane conversations about cookies. But inane conversations that nonetheless make me feel incredibly connected to the world again for Just. One. Moment.

Too often small talk has been given a bad rap. Although I do like to “interview people”, as my husband says, sometimes conversation amongst strangers and acquaintances does not come so easily. But there can be a lot of potential in spontaneous chatter: it can spark a friendship or a romance, it can send out a warning signal (“This is not the friend you are looking for.”), it can lead you to a good restaurant recommendation or indie bookstore when you’re travelling and it can very possibly help you to feel human, like you are included and like you belong.

So here’s three cheers (or at least one) for small talk.

About A Strong Sense of Place

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In Japan, there are more than 300 versions of the Kit Kat bar…including a soy sauce version, a European cheese version and a wasabi version.

There is an 60-room hotel in Sweden that is built every year just 200 kilometers away from the Arctic Circle and, despite being made of frozen water, is required to have fire alarms.

When it comes to cities housing billionaires, Moscow is second only to New York City.

These statements all seem like something fun and obscure you would read in a quirky travel brochure or on a website devoted to interesting trivia about international destinations. And though they sound hyperbolic, they are all true.

Of course, it would be lovely to go investigate these things for myself – maybe some Russian billionaire could front me the $400 per night for a room in the ice hotel (plus the fare for a twelve hour train ride to get there from Stockholm) where I could eat some imported wasabi Kit Kat bars. Except, generous Russian billionaire friend or not, we are still not going anywhere anytime soon. Because: Covid.

Well, then gosh darn it, thank goodness for books. And podcasts. And the Interweb. And armchair travelers like Mel Joulwan and Dave Humphries who have made it their business to read books that boast a Strong Sense of Place and then talk about them on their aptly-named podcast. Although they transplanted themselves from mainland U.S.A. to Prague in the Czech Republic a few years ago with the aim of wandering more, they too are experiencing a travel hiatus. But that hasn’t stopped them from exploring the world through books.

They talk about travel books? Sounds boring, you say.

Oh, trust me – Mel and Dave aren’t a couple of stuffy professor-types discussing only books they found in the Travel Book Co. of Notting Hill – although if the shoe fit, they would. These podcasters are fun and funny and happy to regale their audience about fiction and nonfiction, new books and old, about books written for adults or for children – there are no holds barred. The determining factor is that the book has to have a Strong Sense of Place.

When I was homeschooling my boys a few eons ago, my favorite teaching tool that I hit upon over and over was the idea of unit studies, where everything we learned about revolved around a theme. Indeed, in Mortimer J. Adler’s classic How to Read a Book, he calls this the highest level of reading: syntopical – the reading of multiple books on the same subject. Maybe our reading of multiple picture books and chapter books about dinosaurs or pioneers or famous artists wasn’t exactly the highest level, but it sure did the trick of painting a fuller picture.

Oh! And pictures! This podcast has an affiliated website just bursting with the best photography – all curated for your easy exploring pleasure. Sometimes, because Mel is a Cooker, the photos are of beautiful food that she gives her tried and true recipes for. (She started out with another website Well Fed and some cookbooks of the same name and she never makes you read an 10-page essay before she gives you the recipe.) Dave is a artist who’s website design skills I covet. And – they have a cat named Smudge.

One of my very favorite things I have ever read about reading, I found on their website. Sometimes, even I think: I read too much and I ask myself: What good does it do anyway, this insatiable desire I have to read, read, read? Dave and Mel’s answer: Empathy.

Copyright: Strong Sense of Place

Well, okay then. And now, back to my pile of books.

About Getting Older

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Hello, my name is Bonnie and I’m old.

Age always has been a relative thing. Ten is young to twelve, fifteen is ridiculous to twenty, the thirty-somethings are just babies to forty-somethings and my fifty-ISH is a cakewalk to the octogenarian set. But that doesn’t change how I feel about it. And some days, I just feel kind of like a T-Rex: my skin is scaly, I can’t reach all my itches and I’m gonna be extinct – soon.

Well, not really. But, sort of. The tagline of my blog is The Journey of a Century because of my declaration at age fifty that I was only “halfway there”. But like Bon Jovi’s subsequent lyric, some days more than others I am acutely aware that I am “livin’ on a prayer.”

Let’s talk about my dinosaur skin to start. I seem to be itchy all the time now. I remember In My Youth being puzzled about television commercials featuring senior citizens finding great relief by using a certain anti-itching cream. I understand what that’s all about now. And while many trips to the dermatologist seems to be paying off some for my rosacea (an over-fifty affliction with no rhyme or reason), I have come to the realization that no amount of miracle serum is going to get my face back to its previous Photoshop evenness of coloring. And conversely, no amount of aging seems to be able to put any distance between me and “adult acne”. Let’s not forget to mention undereye circles and (gasp!) WRINKLES. My first trip to the bathroom of the day can be quite unnerving.

Well, that’s not true. The FIRST visit to the bathroom of each day is usually done under cover of night because my over-fifty bladder rarely allows me an unbroken night of slumber. Some nights, I need to stumble there more than once and it doesn’t seem to matter how little liquid I consumed the night before. The really weird thing about going to the bathroom when you are over the proverbial hill: if you sit on the toilet long enough, you can pee twice. And by long enough, I mean a minute.

There are other indications that I’m not the spry bunny I once was: my knees refuse to help me up off the floor – I need the help of a nearby counter to pull me up. Or I just go into a reverse down dog to get back on my feet. Either way, I am thankful for strong arms. And my neck – I am resigned to it never working the way it used to, back when I could shoulder check and not give myself a headache and/or a neck cramp.

But I’m not Complaining. I’m just…Noticing. Out loud.

Maybe what I really want is for someone to tell me that this is all normal(ish), that I’m hitting all the benchmarks at the appropriate times, that I’m above the fiftieth percentile. Because it’s alarming to still feel young in my heart and have the rest of my body mutiny in such a way that tells me otherwise. Or to look at old(ish) photos of myself and then be confused when I look in the mirror and think: umm, that’s not what I remember.

In the spirit of camaraderie, or maybe commiseration, I recently took to the Interwebs to find out how other fifty-somethings were dealing with This Whole Thing. Plug in the hashtags OverFifty or FiftyPlus or SexyAndSilver and you get all the same thing: a bunch of unreasonably good-looking people for their age telling you that It’s All Good, the getting older thing.

Well, I mean really, who’s gonna get anywhere on Instagram advertising bad knees and double chins?

The thing is though…I actually like getting older. Except for the whole imminent death thing, accruing miles (or kilometers) on the human odometer does have its perks. I’m more mellow now, even when I look in the mirror or step on the scale, than I was in my thirties and forties, because like an (actually dying) friend of Anne Lamott once quipped when Anne was worried that a certain dress made her look fat: Honey, you just don’t have that kind of time. I can answer more questions on Jeopardy now- maybe because I’ve lived through more categories. I have more time to go for long walks and write stories and cook healthy-ish meals. I break a lot more rules in writing than I did in English class and I just don’t care anymore. Ish.

I can’t change the marching on of time, so I might as well learn to like the getting older part. The itches – well, maybe I need to get some of that special lotion reserved for the SexySilverSet. Or a backscratcher. I’ll probably get a discount. I’ll let you know how it goes.

About Masks

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Image result for masks in winter

I walked into an appointment yesterday and as I sidled up to the edge of the plexiglass shield between me and the receptionist, I simultaneously became aware of several things at once: the stares of the other clients in the waiting room, the mysteriously cool breeze on my face, the look of horror on the receptionist and the perplexing amount of free-to-infect area between me and that person on the other side of the desk.

I had forgotten to put on my face mask before exiting my car.

With extreme apologies, I quickly donned the spare mask that I keep in my purse at all times. I could have also used the one that I have stashed in the secret pocket of my winter coat or the one that I use as a bookmark in the paperback in my purse or the one that I tuck into my boot in case I misplace all the others. JK. (Sort of.) Once I put my mask on, I returned from The Land of the Shunned and was admitted into the deeper recesses of the waiting room. But I still had to shield myself from some dirty looks.

I am not an anti-masker, just someone who doesn’t emerge from their house that often. I’m also not a germaphobe – no judgement here and I expect none back from the ‘phobes – so I have no internal bells and whistles going off either. With a spouse in a career that had him wearing a mask daily before Dr. Deena told him to, I was given one piece of advice when I complained about either wearing one or not being comfortable: Suck it up, princess.

And so, I have. Besides the obvious Caring For My Fellow Humankind angle, there’s actually a few things I like about mandated mask-wearing.

One: It’s February in Alberta. When the wind chill registers way lower than what the actual temperature is, any extra layer is welcome. I’m not a sissy, it’s the law.

Two: I have rosacea, a skin condition that flares up on any given day (like cold ones) which even the best makeup sometimes fails to disguise. A mask covers up my cheeks and my nose where the redness is most prominent and I don’t have to bother slathering on foundation with a spackle knife. (Yes, it’s an silly insecurity but it’s my insecurity.)

Three: There’s a level playing field out there when everyone has to wear a mask. No one is staring anyone down or saying anything nasty because they’re mask-less. And I no longer have to feel like an oddball in a store if I’m the only one wearing one and I’m not the cashier.

Sure, I look forward to a time when we no longer have to mask up, but I don’t necessarily think masking is going to end when the pandemic does. When we travelled to Asia twelve years ago at the tail-end of the H1N1 scare, we saw many of their citizens wearing masks all the time. It felt foreign to us (well, hello, we were in another country), but it didn’t take long to realize that they just more comfortable with the mask on than without. It might take awhile for many of us to get out of the habit.

Or, at least to that extra cool air on your face.