attempting to thaw, book shopping and baking

Added: 2026-05-14

[00:00:12]Underneath this hat, I have the craziest bed head I have ever had. But it is time to take the cat, not the cat, the dog.

[00:00:19]We're taking the dog on a walk. It is May 5th and it snowed last night. I woke up this morning to take Eileen outside and there was a little blanket of snow on the ground. So, I guess I'm going to put a parka on Heat. Heat.

[00:01:01]Heat.

[00:01:15]Heat.

[00:01:40]Heat. Heat.

[00:01:47]Heat. Heat.

[00:02:33]I am at McN right now is my local bookstore and I'm going to pick up a copy of Yester Year if they have it here. I think they should cuz I'm pretty sure it came out last month. I think like April 7th or something was when it came out. And I'm also pretty sure that my family friend is that author's editor. But I'll confirm if I find a copy of the book. Uh yeah. So going to get that. And then I'm also going to pick up one beer uh from the liquor store because I want to make a chocolate Guinness cake and it calls for one can of Guinness.

[00:03:13]The name party.

[00:03:38]Hello I just got home from the bookstore and I just changed. It's the same day though.

[00:04:04]They didn't have the book that I was looking for and then instead of leaving, which I should have just done, I just ended up picking up some other books.

[00:04:12]So, I'll show you what I got. The Hearing Trumpet by Leonora Carrington. I trust any NRB book for the most part.

[00:04:20]Generally, I feel like if NRB publishes it, it's a good book. And Olga Tartuk did the afterward for this. So, that's very promising. I got Godlike by Richard Hell. I just love Richard Hell. Um, I just think he's an absolutely fascinating person. He did an interview on the podcast Apology Podcast where he just talked to the podcast host about books. That's what the podcast is about.

[00:04:45]It's about books. But Richard Hell is just so well read and such an interesting person. So yeah, I would highly recommend listening to the Apology Podcast episode with Richard Hell, but then also reading his memoir, I Dreamed I Was a Very Clean Tra. Small Boat by Vincent Deloqua. This book has been so hard to find in Canada or maybe it wasn't even available until really recently. I just remember last year when it was on the International Booker Prize and it was shortlisted. I just couldn't find it anywhere in Canada. I went to Toronto and I was looking in Winnipeg. I didn't go to Toronto to find the book, but I happened to be in Toronto at some point last year and couldn't find it.

[00:05:18]And then I also couldn't find it in Winnipeg. But I'm really excited to read it. I generally don't buy hardcover books. I'm typically willing to wait until a book is in paperback because I don't really like the way that hard covers feel, but I've just been hearing such good things about this book. And then all the authors blurbed on the back like Nina Dunham, Tony Tula, I can't remember how to pronounce this guy's name. Tula Tamui, I think is how it's pronounced. He wrote the book Rejection.

[00:05:45]Megan Nolan, she wrote Ordinary Human Failings. Like so many good authors are blurbed on the back of this, so I feel like it must be really good. Death Takes Me by Christina Rivera Garza. I hadn't really heard anything about this book ever. Actually, I had never heard of it, but it sounds really good and it sounds a little like gross. It's like a crime, a literary crime novel, which I really like. And then, Ain't I a Woman by Bel Hooks. I've been meaning to read this forever. I've only read her memoir and All About Love. Is that what it's called? All About Love. Everything I know About Love. No, I think it's All About Love. uh they're both great. And so after reading those, I really wanted to read this. And I think it'll be kind of nice to mix in this book, which is non-fiction, with some of the fiction that I'll be reading cuz I just bought a million fiction books.

[00:06:35]Okay, that's what I got. Now, let's bake a cake. So, this is the recipe that I'm following. It's by Nigella Lawson, and my mom made it recently, and it was incredible. So, I figured I would just do that.

[00:08:46]It's weird grasshopper like legs allow.

[00:08:59]Let's see.

[00:09:38]Thank you.

[00:09:53]>> So cute.

[00:09:55]Big pause.

[00:09:57]>> Yeah.

[00:10:25]There is this Susan Harris workout video from the mid80s that I'm trying to find on YouTube and I'm starting to think that maybe the full version isn't available anywhere. I've seen little clips of it and it seems like such a good combination of cardio and strength training. She kind of does cardio while holding weights and with ankle weights and they seem like pretty big weights.

[00:10:52]Like they look like at least 10 lb weights. So that seems like a good workout to me. Okay, I just found a 10-minute version of it. It's called the firm body sculpting basics and it's the classic DVD workout from 1986.

[00:11:07]But yeah, this is only 10 minutes of it, but I want the whole thing. Maybe if I find all the individual portions of the video, like I think I just found the the arms portion and then maybe if I find like the legs and then there will be like a a back and like abs part, I can piece them together and make like a Frankenstein version of the video.

[00:11:35]Squeeze it one more time. Four. Three.

[00:11:39]And now the shoulders pulling forward.

[00:11:41]Rolling. Two. And reverse.

[00:12:53]I was about to walk to the grocery store to pick up a couple things for dinner, but then I stepped outside and it was really windy and then my car keys just happened to be in my purse. So, I decided that we're just going to drive.

[00:13:05]But I want to choose a CD. It's a really quick drive. It's like maybe 1 minute, but I still want to pick a fun CD to listen to.

[00:13:13]John just bought this Simon and Garfuncle CD.

[00:13:17]But I also have this Christina Aguilera.

[00:13:19]Why am I holding it like that?

[00:13:21]It has Oh, Genie in a Bottle. What a Girl Wants. Oh, wow. Yeah, this is a good one. Okay, let's listen to this.

[00:13:49]My grocery store never has QP mayo and I forget every time and I come here looking for it and they never have it.

[00:13:57]What the heck?

[00:14:34]I just got home from the grocery store.

[00:14:36]I'm going to put all that away. But there was this package in the mailbox when I got home. And I know it's bookmail. I'm pretty sure it's an ARC.

[00:14:43]It's from Hashette. And before I put all that away, I want to see what's in here.

[00:14:47]I also need to take off this hoodie because I'm getting so hot. Sometimes I get bookmail that I'm not expecting. And then other times, uh, I get an email about it, so I I know that it's coming. But often times when I get those emails, it'll take like a month or two for the book to arrive. I don't know if I knew about this one.

[00:15:08]It's called New Skin by Sarah Wang.

[00:15:11]What's this about? Oh, Maggie Nelson and Chris Cross are blurbed on the back. That's promising.

[00:15:20]Oh, sounds like a complicated motheraughter dynamic. Interesting.

[00:15:24]Whoa. Says, okay, it's like about a young woman and her mom. They have a complicated relationship. Her mother, Fanny, is addicted to plastic surgery and getting bargain procedures in basement of LA's bootleg booty beauty industry. Now, Fanny's disog is in dangerous revolt, infected and collapsing yet again from black market injectables.

[00:15:48]Whoa. Okay, that sounds gross, but also sounds like something I would enjoy.

[00:15:54]Okay, exciting. Whenever I buy Deli Turkey, I'm reminded of this TV show. I actually can't remember what it was called or even really what it was about, but I just remember so clearly. There was this scene where this girl is, I think, like living with her aunt or maybe her aunt is like babysitting her while her parents are out of town on vacation. And her aunt drops her off at school at high school and the girl is like, "Did you pack me a lunch?" And her aunt hands her a bag of deli turkey and a pack of cigarettes and she's like, "Here, uh, this is protein and then these cigarettes will suppress your appetite." But it's just like so horrible and like kind of funny. She's supposed to be an evil character, but I just think about that every time I buy deli turkey. And that just reminded me whenever I see one of my friends smoking, I think of this quote from a book by um the woman that wrote Big Swiss. I can't remember the name of that author, but anyway, in one of her other books, I think it might be Vacuum in the Dark, there's a character who gets her aunt to send her a carton of cigarettes.

[00:17:01]It's like a type of cigarette that she can't buy in the state that she lives in. So her aunt sends them to her, but she sends the she sends the cigarettes, this carton of cigarettes with a note that says something like, "You should really quit. These will wreck your face." And so whenever I see one of my friends smoking, I'm like, "Those will wreck those will wreck your face." I usually don't say that out loud, but I am thinking it. Those will wreck your face. That was just such a funny thing to say.

[00:17:57]I got absolutely rocked by the craziest stomach. flu yesterday. I'm feeling a million times better today, but I haven't been sick like that in years.

[00:18:08]And it kind of reminded me of being a kid. Like when one of your classmates gets sick and then everyone in your elementary school class gets sick. Like that's what it felt like. I was also just so delirious all day and like so bored because I couldn't really watch anything. Like I found that watching TV just made me nauseous. And so I was basically just like laying in bed listening to like a meditation app cuz I didn't know what else to do. And then just like going in and out of consciousness. So I'm just going to take some gravel uh and hopefully I'll be able to stomach some food today. But yeah, that was crazy. I'm going to definitely take it easy this afternoon.

[00:18:55]and I just did a little bit of work this morning, but I'm feeling a bit depleted.

[00:19:01]I'm thinking I'll just do some knitting and I haven't watched the last couple episodes of the new season of Euphoria, so I'm going to watch those. And that's kind of all I have planned for today. I have to go grab coffee beans at some point, but I'm still a little nervous about leaving the house, but I think if it's just like a quick in and out, it'll be chill. Last night when I started to feel less delirious, I did manage to finish The Handmaid's Tale and I absolutely loved it. Like it truly is incredible. And I think it's one of those books that I just always had kind of on the back burner. And I often feel that way about classics. Like I just kind of think, oh, they'll always they're always going to be there, so I don't need to prioritize them. Then I have this delusional scarcity mindset about new releases where I'm like, I need to read these new books so they're going to like disappear or I'll forget about them, which is not the way that books work. Uh, so I yeah, I just didn't prioritize reading The Handmaid's Tail.

[00:20:01]I'm so sad that I didn't read it sooner, but I'm also very happy that I did finally get around to reading it. It is so poignant and like eerily so. Margaret Atwood describes that entire world.

[00:20:11]that's like a dystopian America where women's rights are slowly and then quite quickly taken away from them and then just the way that society evolves to be this really like hyperconservative kind of yeah dystopian Christian society is really reminiscent of some of the things that happen in certain states in the US and I don't know yeah I can't believe that book was written in the mid80s cuz it really does just feel so relevant I would highly highly recommend it it's not like a stuffy boring boring classic. It It reads like contemporary fiction. It's very very good, which I don't think you need me to tell you that like everyone knows The Hammy's Tale is whatever. It's a classic for a reason, but I think sometimes I even have to convince myself that like classics are worth reading. They're not like boring and they actually are approachable. I think the hammock's tail is especially approachable.