Recent Reads
Girl in a Boy House
by Nicole Boyhouse
1h ago
March has been so busy, and full, and fun, and I am surprised we are still in it. Typically, the months fly by so quickly I hardly realize that we experienced a month, but for some reason I feel astonishment that it’s still March. Two weeks ago I was packing for Vegas, and that feels like two months ago; our houseguests left on Sunday and that feels like it happened three weeks ago. Part of my cognitive dissonance is that March in Kelowna feels a lot like May in Calgary, but with less daylight and snow. We got back from Vegas and I excitedly thought It’s almost my birthday!, forgetting that a ..read more
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Nicole’s Favourite Things: The Viva Las Vegas Edition
Girl in a Boy House
by Nicole Boyhouse
1w ago
One of my very Favourite Things about air travel is the insane cultural whiplash you can experience in only a few hours. It’s pretty incredible, when you think about it. One moment one is involved in their sleepy little life, and the next moment one is on the Vegas strip, being bombarded with sights and sounds and lights and people. And then? Back to the sleepy little life. We had an absolute blast in Las Vegas; we got back on Monday and things have been smoothly puttering along since then. We have houseguests arriving today, but not for a happy reason: our friends from Ottawa, who we will be ..read more
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Gardeners and Flowers
Girl in a Boy House
by Nicole Boyhouse
2w ago
Before she was part of the Real Housewives franchise, Carole Radziwill wrote a really excellent memoir entitled What Remains, which I have read many times. There is a part in the book where she and her husband’s cousin, who is none other than JFK Jr (spoiler alert, everyone dies around her), have a discussion about marriage. They have a theory that in a successful marriage there is one Gardener and one Flower; it’s possible a marriage could work with two Gardeners, but never with two Flowers. I have thought about this theory approximately one million times since first reading this book in 2006 ..read more
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Five For Friday: The Ask Me Anything Edition
Girl in a Boy House
by Nicole Boyhouse
3w ago
Thank you to everyone who submitted questions for my Ask Me Anything! Today I have quite a variety to answer; I love how different these all are. From Bijoux (HI BIJOUX): As I like to travel, what would be your Canadian not-to-be-missed sights? I considered putting off answering this question until May, when I will be back from a trip to Ontario and Quebec; I am sure there will be many not-to-be-missed sights that I will discover. Then I thought that no matter what I see on that trip, my number one answer will not change, and that is the Canadian Rockies in general, and Banff in particular. I ..read more
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Mind Over Matter
Girl in a Boy House
by Nicole Boyhouse
3w ago
I was so nostalgic the other day when I saw a woman with two young children in the produce section. It brought me back to grocery shopping with the boys, something I genuinely enjoyed: counting out the apples, picking out strawberries, pretending to tickle them with cucumbers. I smiled at the warm memories and then was jolted out of them when I saw them again at an adjacent checkout line to mine, where one of the children was hysterically screaming and the other one kept saying “Mommy, I need to go potty. Mommy, potty. MOMMY.” The little girl kept screaming and screaming, her shrieks and sobs ..read more
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Nicole’s Favourite Things: The Leap Year Edition
Girl in a Boy House
by Nicole Boyhouse
3w ago
Happy Leap Year, everyone! Our last Leap Year was in 2020, and thinking about it now, how strange that time was, having an extra day just ahead of being locked down and going through a global pandemic. When I look at my blog from February 2020, it is all very cheerful and clearly I had no idea what was about to occur. I also, it seems, did not mark the leap day in any way at all. Well, I shall not make that mistake this year! I have had a really lovely month filled with good things, so why not extend it a day? Nicole’s Favourite Things: The Leap Year Edition The E is for Environment One of my ..read more
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That’s The Way I’ve Always Heard It Should Be
Girl in a Boy House
by Nicole Boyhouse
1M ago
Many years ago I was in the playground with a friend and our children; she had an older daughter who at the time was in first grade, and so was not at the playground but instead in school. My friend said something to me that has stayed with me for years. Her daughter, she said, “…has a whole life now that I don’t know about, there are so many hours a day I don’t know what she’s doing or who her friends are. It’s just a whole life separate to me.” At the time, my children were 3 and 4 and it would be difficult to overestimate how deeply those words affected me. My life and my children’s lives w ..read more
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Dinner Every Damn Day
Girl in a Boy House
by Nicole Boyhouse
1M ago
I have mentioned at length how much I cook; until we went to Mexico, I had cooked dinner every single night from October through January. We rarely eat out, and although everyone in the house CAN cook, and when it comes to other meals they DO cook, but I am the only one who makes dinners. There are reasons for this, I’m sure, but I can’t think of what those reasons are right now. It’s not the cooking per se that is exhausting, it’s the planning and the ingredient list-making and the grocery shopping, am I right? I am a person who makes a meal plan for the week and then sticks to that meal plan ..read more
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People Who Watch People
Girl in a Boy House
by Nicole Boyhouse
1M ago
The world is such an interesting place, isn’t it? It’s wild that a person can go from this: To this, in only a matter of hours. It has been very grey and foggy this week, but it’s so mild and windless that I don’t mind it at all. Our snow is basically all gone, except for piles in parking lots and along the walking paths where it had been shovelled. Those piles are a source of great joy to Rex, who likes to roll and slide down them, and then starts to eat them. His penchant for eating snow is pretty cute, and so I’m trying not to be horrified when he shoves his face into filthy parking lot s ..read more
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January 2023 Vacation Books, and Bookends
Girl in a Boy House
by Nicole Boyhouse
1M ago
In case it hasn’t been made clear yet, one of the great pleasures of my life is reading. I’m not even sure I would call it a pleasure, now that I think about it; it’s more of just an incredibly important part of my day. It’s the first R in REM Y REM, and you know that’s my recipe for living a balanced and healthy life. So allow me to rewind to my first sentence: one of the great pleasures of my life is reading on vacation. Is there anything more luxurious than devouring a good book beside some sort of cooling body of water? With an icy drink in hand and the sunshine making that icy drink all c ..read more
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