Dodged that one...!

(for now, anyway...!)  

As I wrote previously, both dh & I got warned by our family doctor about our high cholesterol numbers when we had our annual physicals/bloodwork last fall. He gave us lab requisitions to repeat the bloodwork (just for the cholesterol numbers) in January, and said if there wasn't improvement, he'd have to put us on medication. 

Needless to say, that was a sobering thought -- neither of us particularly wanted to add yet another prescription to our daily pill regime.  I can't say we've been complete angels, but we have made an effort in the three months since then to cut back on processed foods;  eat more fruits, vegetables and fibre; snack less and take smaller portions, and to be at least a little more active. As of yesterday morning, I was down about 7 pounds since we saw the doctor in mid-October (and about 20 pounds from my heaviest weight ever), while dh was down about 14. (!! -- isn't that always the way??)  

Yesterday morning, we walked over to the nearby lab for our repeat bloodwork. By late afternoon, I had my results (online), and dh's were waiting when we got up this morning. And... 

All is well!!  :)  All the cholesterol numbers are back within normal range, except dh's HDL (the "good" cholesterol)  -- but it's better than it was. The doctor/his office hasn't called us yet about it, but we're assuming no meds, at least not right now. ;)  

Obviously we have to keep doing what we've been doing!  But it does go to show you that even making some small changes in your diet and lifestyle can really help. 

"Yellowface" by R.F. Kuang

"Yellowface" by R.F. Kuang is the February pick for our Childless Collective Nomo Book Club. It's very much a novel of our times.  

June Hayward and Athena Liu met several years ago as students at Yale. Since then, they've both published books, but while Athena is now the darling of the literary world, June is struggling. They're both living in Washington DC now and occasionally hang out together -- and they're in Athena's apartment together when Athena dies in a rather bizarre way (!). Sometime between the arrival of the paramedics and her departure from the apartment, June succumbs to curiosity and temptation, and slips the draft of Athena's just-completed new novel into her bag. 

It's a novel about Chinese labourers on the Western Front during the First World War, and June immediately recognizes its potential. After some edits, she submits it to her agent as her own work -- and it becomes a bestseller, under the culturally ambiguous pen name of Juniper Song (June's real first and second names, courtesy of her hippie parents). 

The book becomes a New York Times bestseller. The fame and fortune is everything June ever dreamed of.  

And then it slowly turns into a nightmare... 

"Yellowface" is brilliantly crafted and well-written (with June as narrator, so we see and experience everything from her perspective). It offers up some dagger-sharp observations about the publishing industry, social media, “cancel culture,” culture wars, cultural appropriation and racism, among other hot topics. As a writer myself (although it's been a very long time since I dabbled in fiction), the parts about writing and the writing process are bang on.  But I'll admit that the moral/ethical dilemmas and ambiguities presented, and the sheer nastiness of the characters (including -- especially?? -- June herself!), left me feeling more than a little queasy! 

I don't want to say too much more -- too many potential spoilers!  But if you're looking for a topical novel that's bound to generate a lot of discussion in your book club, "Yellowface" will do the job!   

I really had to think about how to rate this one, and whether the pros of the novel outweighed the cons.  I've settled on 4 stars. (I think! lol)  

This was Book #3 read to date in 2025 (and Book #3 finished in January), bringing me to 7% of my 2025 Goodreads Reading Challenge goal of 45 books. I am (for the moment, anyway...!) on track to meet my goal.  :)  You can find reviews of all my books read to date in 2025 tagged as "2025 books." 

Odds & ends

• How is it almost the end of January?? 
• We (FINALLY!!) got to meet Little Great-Nephew #2 this past weekend!!  He's now 5 weeks old :)  and looks a lot like his older brother did at that age, albeit his hair is a lot darker.  His grandmother dug up his dad's newborn hospital photo and holy cow, the resemblance is startling.  LGN#1 looks a lot more like his mother than his dad, though, so we'll see how things evolve with LGN#2!  
• Older Nephew (the dad) called during the week and asked if we'd like to come up. Of course we said yes. He apologized that they hadn't invited us to come before this, but he said they've been trying not to get swamped with visitors and just have a few people over at one time, and we said we understood.    
• SIL had an appointment that morning, but she & BIL drove up later themselves. I held the baby as much as I could once we got there -- because I knew SIL would monopolize him when she arrived -- and she did!  Grandma's prerogative, I guess...!  
• Dh saw them all in mid-December, on Older Nephew's birthday (not including the baby, who hadn't been born yet!), but I had that horrible cold then and reluctantly stayed home. So I hadn't seen any of them since LGN#1's birthday in mid-November -- two months!  :(  We tried to make sure we gave LGN#1 lots of attention too, as well as the baby.  I can't rough-house with him the way dh does, but I enjoyed helping him do some jigsaw puzzles and admired his drawing and colouring skills while we were there.
• The dog seemed a little puzzled why I wasn't paying him quite as much as attention as I usually do when I'm there, lol  -- especially when we first came in. I was sitting on the couch holding the baby and he hopped up beside me -- I had to gently push him away. At one point, he hopped up on the back of the sofa and started licking the back of my neck and my ear!!  lol    
• I've always been a very well-organized person -- but I continue to feel like I just can't get a handle on everything I need to be doing & reading right now. I've been feeling like this for a while now, and certainly since December. That cold, the fall I took and Christmas with my parents really threw my to-do lists and usual routines out of whack...!  
• Come to think of it, I think this feeling began, or at least intensified, after the U.S. elections in November.... (!! -- hmmm...). 
• Is anyone else as sick of NFL football as I am??  I'm not sure if it's my current mood, or my imagination, or I just haven't been paying attention, but I feel like dh has watched more football more closely this year than in past years. Sometimes it feels like it's on ALL. THE. TIME!!  (lately, anyway!).  I manage to mostly ignore it/tune it out, but sometimes I can't. I just find it so tedious, and it feels like it's been going on FOREVER... 
• (It's not even Canadian football! -- I feel like I could cut him some slack in that case, lol.)
• Of course, he tells me he feels the same way about figure skating season! lol 
• BIL asks us why we don't just get another TV set? For one thing, I don't particularly want a TV set in my bedroom. For another, I'm not really sure where we'd put it. There's not a lot of space in this condo (also a factor in terms of the noise from two competing TV sets...!), and just about every wall already has a piece of furniture in front of it or something mounted on it. 
• (Can you tell I'm in a MOOD?  lol) 
• Our repeat bloodwork (to see whether our cholesterol levels have decreased over the past 3-4 months) is tomorrow morning, at the blood lab just up the street -- we will walk there. We should have the results later that day (certainly by the next day -- we can view them online, and I'm sure our family doctor or his office will be calling us,one way or another).  Wish us luck!! 
• I was up very early one morning this past weekend for a special reason. I'll be telling you all about it soon! 

Annoying things & small pleasures

 Annoying things:  

• It's Blue Monday today. I've written about Blue Monday (and its origins) in the past, and while it's basically a made-up event, it seems more appropriate than ever this year, due to an unfortunate convergence of Martin Luther King Day in the U.S. with that "other" most un-MLK-like event in the U.S.  'Nuff said. 
• Also, it's a chilly grey day here, with late morning temperatures of  -12C, windchill factor -16C. It could be worse: at the same time, where my parents are in Manitoba, it was -31C and -43C windchill. (And they moved today's events in Washington DC indoors because the forecast was -5C??)
• (Maybe more like like "alarming"?)  Politics, current events, etc. I am something of a news junkie, but I've had to turn the channel a lot lately, because I can literally feel my blood pressure rising. I said to dh, "I think I understand a little more about how Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland must have felt back in the 1930s."  :(  
• Two related annoying things:  (1) Mark Zuckerberg removing fact-checking from Meta platforms -- (not) coincidentally just as You-Know-Who was preparing to take office in the U.S. --which (2) has prompted a bunch of my friends to start exploring alternatives to FB & IG on other platforms (and some outright leaving altogether). (WhatsApp, which some have suggested as an alternative, is also owned by Meta, albeit it has the advantage of being encrypted.)  
• I'm not at the point of leaving Meta (yet -- too many friends & relatives on there, too many FB groups I'm active in, including a family group that I co-moderate) -- but maybe it's a good thing I haven't had a lot of time to spend on its sites lately anyway??  
• Trying to find another forum, especially for the groups I belong to, and one that everyone can agree on, is maddening. (How many new apps is this aging late Boomer/early GenXer supposed to install and learn how to use??)  A lot of people are moving over to BlueSky because of the even more maddening things happening on X/Twitter -- but for all its merits, BlueSky is not really an alternative to FB/IG, and certainly not conducive to private group chats. 
• Speaking of BlueSky -- as I was in this post -- I had a flood of new followers over the Christmas holidays -- again, most of them people I do not know or follow, and most of them men. I went in this week and started blocking them, and now I feel much better!  lol  
• My left eye has been twitching lately -- on & off, for well over a month now (maybe almost two). I was complaining about it to dh recently while we were watching the news, and he joked that I have to stop stressing out about the Orange One, because he's going to be around for another four years. I said, "Come to think of it, this DID start around mid-November...!"  Hmmm.... 
• Dh went out to get groceries this morning and brought me back some soup for lunch. And of course my sweater sleeve caught the spoon as I was reaching over to silence a spam call on his  phone (while he was in the kitchen) -- and almost the whole thing wound up on the placemat, tabletop and floor.  (And I was hungry!!)  SIGH... I wound up having toast with peanut butter instead.
• I've noticed that the most recent box or two of teabags I've bought (Tetley) is now being made from flimsier (presumably cheaper) cardboard. And the teabags themselves are now being made from a different material. I haven't been quite as satisfied with my tea lately, and I'm wondering it that's why? (It's quite possible they've changed the composition of the actual tea itself too, I suppose.)  Shrinkflation, grrrrr..... 
• I did some Googling and found this on Tetley Canada's website: "Notice some of our Orange Pekoe packs looking a bit different? Don't panic! We're still serving up the same great tasting tea you know and love... As part of our dedication to sustainability, we've upgraded our Orange Pekoe packaging. Our sleeker and more compact carton design means less packaging waste and all Orange Pekoe teas now utilize plant-based tea bags!"  Hmmm.... 
• Little Great-Nephew #2 is one month old and we STILL haven't seen him!!  :(  We left for Manitoba right after he was born and were away for two weeks. BIL told us because we'd both been sick and because we'd been flying, we were in "quarantine" for two weeks. (!) (Even though we'd both worn masks at the airport & on the plane.) Not BIL's idea, the parents' (!). They were not at all like that when LGN #1 was born -- but of course that was pre-pandemic. (Hoping this weekend may be the time...!) 
• Back home for two weeks now, and still feeling tired and overwhelmed by all the stuff that we let slide while we were sick/away.  :p   
  
• SO DRY in our condo unit (despite running the humidifier constantly -- albeit not at top speed -- too noisy!). I can probably count the number of times the humidity has cracked the 40% mark since we got home on the fingers of one hand (with some to spare). It was below 30% when we returned, and is often below 30% when we wake up in the morning. Constantly applying hand lotion, lip balm and eye drops. 

Scary thing: 

• Repeat bloodwork to check our cholesterol levels, booked at the nearby lab for the end of the month. If the numbers haven't declined since the last bloodwork was done in late September, we're getting meds prescribed -- and neither of us wants another prescription...! 

Small pleasures: 

• Spotting a box in my parents' crawlspace with my name written on it in a corner I don't often enter, while hunting for gift wrapping supplies -- which turned out to contain some books and other items I'd been hunting for for several years now. I was THRILLED -- I'd feared they'd been sent to the thrift store by mistake. I couldn't bring everything home with me this time around, but I did pack: 
• My four university residence yearbooks (including one with photos of dh in it!). 
• Not just the two or three I remembered, but FIVE paperback novels by D.E. Stevenson that I'd bought at a used bookstore on Portage Avenue in Winnipeg in the early 1980s. (Proof that I'm a longtime fan!  lol) I posted about it on my DES fan group, and the other members were almost as thrilled as I was! (The titles were The Baker's Daughter (my favourite), The House on the Cliff, Shoulder the Sky, The Blue Sapphire and Green Money.) 
• Another paperback novel that I'd read as a teenager and LOVED: "The Distant Summer" by Sarah Patterson (daughter of British novelist Jack Higgins), who was just a teenager when she wrote it (published in 1976). It's what would be called a "young adult" novel these days -- set in World War II England, and beautifully written. It appears to be the only novel she ever wrote. (What a pity.) 
• Not in the box, but I also found and brought home my copy of "Nancy Drew and the Clue of the Whistling Bagpipes" by Carolyn Keene. I bought it with the allowance money I'd saved, while on an Anglican Church Junior Auxiliary bus trip to Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, when I was 7 or 8 (late 1960s). Cost: $1.59 at KMart.  It's the one Nancy Drew book I wanted to save. :) 
• My (TV) broadcast news demo reel from journalism school. (I graduated -- gulp -- 40 years ago.) I don't recall what they called the format -- it looks a little like a VHS tape, but it's not VHS, or a format you could play on your VHS at home (assuming you still have one, and it still works!).  I doubt there's a newsroom in the country (in North America? in the world??) that uses that technology anymore. But I brought it home with me. I figure SOMEONE might be able to digitize it for me. I'm sure it would be both a cringe and a hoot to see what's on it!  
• Also in the box: other books, as well as a few old photo albums (one mostly empty, and one exclusively devoted to photos from concerts my friends & I had attended. Faded 50-year-old snapshots of the Bay City Rollers, anyone?? lol). 
• My sister pointed out a couple of other boxes in another dark corner of the crawlspace that had my name on them. They were too hard to access just then, and it was towards the end of our visit -- but I will definitely drag them out and go through them the next time I'm there.  (Still hunting for the box that contained my diaries, journals, holiday postcard collection, teenage fan fiction and other early writings/embarrassing stuff, lol.)   
• Returned to the dentist on Jan. 8th for my twice-postponed checkup and cleaning (not really a pleasure, lol). The dentist said one of my lower left teeth still seems a TINY bit loose, but it's better than it was when I took that tumble in December, and the others he noticed seem to have firmed up. He'll continue to keep an eye on things. The hygienist was not my usual one (she's away on vacation), but told me everything looked good and to keep doing what I was doing. 
• My knees -- which were KILLING me from going up and down stairs in my parents' SPLIT LEVEL house! -- are starting to recover...! 
• Finding some cute new clothes for the great-niblings at the mall. :)  
• Cashing in on my birthday discounts and other offers from various retailers. 
• Annoying thing:  realizing I had a discount from the mega-bookstore, AFTER I spent my Christmas gift card from dh there! Grrrr....
• Small pleasure:  I guess I'll just have to go back and buy some more books, right??  Why let a good discount go to waste? lol

#MicroblogMondays: When I'm 64

Yesterday was my 64th (!!) birthday. For months and months now, whenever I thought about this particular birthday, a certain song would start playing in my brain.  (Hint: I'm a lifelong Beatles fan.)  ;) 

Paul McCartney wrote "When I'm 64" in 1956, when he was just 14 years old (!) and recorded it 10 years later for the Beatles' "Sergeant Pepper" album, when he was still just 24. I've heard that when he DID turn 64 (in 2006), his kids & grandkids sent him a recording of themselves singing the song. (He's 82 now.)(!)  

There's a line in the song that has also carved itself into my brain (beyond the opening "When I get old and losing my hair, many years from now..." and "will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I'm 64?"):  it's:  

"Grandchildren on your knee/Vera, Chuck and Dave."  

Paul has five adult children (four with his first wife Linda and one with second wife Heather Mills). He's also a grandfather 8 times over. (Daughters Mary & Stella have four kids each-- none of them named Vera, Chuck or Dave). The kids call him "Grandude," which provided the inspiration for two "Grandude" children's books Paul has written. (Fun fact:  the illustrator is Canadian -- I saw her interviewed on the news a few years ago.)  

Needless to say, Vera, Chuck and Dave have not materialized in my own life (and never will) -- and (obviously) neither have their parents.  :p  I do have two wonderful nephews and three adorable great-niblings (including a new little great-nephew I have yet to meet), and I'm very grateful for any time I get to spend with them. (It's great -- but it's not QUITE the same...!) 

Milestone birthdays (including ones highlighted by the Beatles, lol) certainly do make you think about what was, what might have been, and what may come. Next year I'll be 65 and officially a senior citizen, by just about any measure. (!) 

64 (and 65) seems like a very LONG way off when you're 14 or 24 (which is when I got married). I could never have imagined all the things that have happened in my life, good and bad, since then. (Paul is now 82 (!) -- I'm sure he'd say the same thing.) I certainly would never have thought I'd be childless & grandchildless. (Oh, the innocence of youth...)  

Still, aging also gives you an appreciation for the good things in your life. As my grandma used to say (and as I've often recounted in this blog), "It sure beats the alternative...!"  I may not have children or grandchildren -- but I have a great husband (of almost 40! years now), a pretty great extended family, a nice home, a decent pension & benefits, lots of great books to read, plenty to eat, and my health is still pretty good, albeit my blood pressure & cholesterol are higher and knees a whole lot creakier than when I was 24. Still, I'll take it. As the song says, "Who could ask for more?"  

(Well -- we might ask -- but we don't always GET, do we? But we can be grateful for what we do have, especially at this stage of life...!) 

You can find more of this week's #MicroblogMondays posts here.  

"Peter West" by D.E. Stevenson

"Peter West" is the one novel by D.E. Stevenson that my DES reading group has never read together in its 25+ years of existence. Most of the members who have read it before have commented that it's not among their DES favourites. 

Just a few chapters in, I could see why.  

This was Stevenson's very first published novel (serialized first and then published in book form in 1923), and it contains some of the hallmarks of many later DES novels -- it's set in a small village (Kintoul) in Scotland, with some lovely landscape descriptions, a strong sense of morality, loyal servants/retainers, a sympathetic minister of the local church, etc.  But Stevenson here is still very much an author finding her voice. 

The title character, Peter West, 35, has watched Beth Kerr, the daughter of the local boatman/ferry operator grow up into a beautiful young woman. As the Goodreads blurb for this book says, "Peter is a lonely man with a weak heart and few family members and friends."  Both are manipulated by their families into marriages to other people, but this only serves to strengthen their feelings for each other. Will true love triumph? (You probably already know the answer, lol.) 

Stevenson was very much a woman of her class and times, and that's often reflected in her books.  Generally, however, it's not as blatantly obvious in her later books as it is here. I'm willing to forgive the occasional cringeworthy word choice or sentence when the rest of the book is good. "Peter West," however, contains some real clangers that are pretty jarring to our modern sensibilities. 

Peter is about 35 and while we don't know exactly how old Beth is (I'm guessing probably around 16-17?), she's described -- in Peter's own words & thoughts -- as a child -- which, from a modern perspective (again), seems slightly icky.  

The book was somewhat redeemed near the end when Beth explains to a friend that "I just felt it was my right to have a happy life, or at least one not utterly sordid and miserable.. may be more selfish than our mothers, but at least we are more able to face life, and are truer to ourselves."  What an enlightened feminist statement for 1923!  

But overall, this a much darker, more melodramatic/overwrought and less charming story than Stevenson's usual/later fare. I love most of Stevenson's other novels that I've read to date (and I've read a lot of them) -- and I don't regret reading this one -- but I doubt I'll be returning to this one anytime soon.    

I struggled with the rating for this one. 2.5 stars for StoryGraph, and I debated whether I should round that up or down for Goodreads. It had its good points -- and it pains me to give a DES book such a low rating -- but ultimately I can't put it on the same level as other DES books I've read and rated at 3 stars. 

2 stars it is.  

I'll count this one as a re-read when we finish our chapter-by-chapter group read & discussion in late March.  

This was Book #2 read to date in 2025 (and Book #2 finished in January), bringing me to 4% of my 2025 Goodreads Reading Challenge goal of 45 books. I am (for the moment, anyway...!) 1 book ahead of schedule to meet my goal.  :)  You can find reviews of all my books read to date in 2025 tagged as "2025 books." 

"Others Like Me" by Nicole Louie

"Others Like Me: The Lives of Women without Children" by Nicole Louie has been on my radar since it was published in North America a few months ago. (Katy Seppi will be interviewing the author in a Childless Collective event later this month.) 

Louie is childfree by choice, and has known since she was fairly young that she was not interested in having children. Driven by an insatiable curiosity about the lives of "others like me" -- and struggling with others' acceptance of her decision (or lack thereof...!) -- she interviewed dozens of childfree and childless women from around the world about their personal stories. The book cleverly interweaves Louie's own story with those of 14 of the women she spoke with.  

Louie was born in Brazil and spent her childhood there, but has lived all over the world, including Sweden, the U.K. and Ireland (where she now resides), and her interview subjects also come from diverse backgrounds. This gives the book a multicultural flavour that I really enjoyed!  

I loved how the book ended, with these words (and I don't think I'm giving anything away here...!): 

It's the uterus that is empty. 

Not you. 

Not your life. 

4 stars on Goodreads and StoryGraph.  

This was Book #1 read to date in 2025 (and Book #1 finished in January), bringing me to 2% of my 2025 Goodreads Reading Challenge goal of 45 books. I am (for the moment, anyway...!) on track to meet my goal.  :)  You can find reviews of all my books read to date in 2025 tagged as "2025 books."