Midsize Style, Instagram, and Me

I’ve blogged here before about my evolving relationship with style. This year I decided to lean into it as a new side hobby (besides writing, of course). One reason is that I needed a new side hobby: gardening hasn’t been doing it for me, contra dancing has been scant although that’s about to change, travel has still been mostly on hold, and I like rotating hobbies but it’s been a while since I picked up a new one. Another is that [CW: weight…..] like many people, I’ve gained weight in the past few years, so I wanted to tap into ways to feel good about my body as it is now. Instagram has turned out to be a great source for that, interestingly enough. Yes, yes, the evils of social media and so on, but it’s all about who you interact with and follow/friend. I’m now following a variety of folks of all sizes, some style-related, others exercise- and outdoors-related (more aspirational than inspirational at this point, alas). I’m staying away from “how to flatter your body” and “how not to wear…” accounts, focusing instead on people with a wide range of personal styles, both trendy and not. “Midsize” is a term originating on TikTok, meaning folks who, like me, aren’t quite plus size but are near the top of “straight” sizes. Following midsize style accounts gives me a sense of how things might look on my body and encourages me to be more daring. I’m also following people who…

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Cozy and Cheeseless

It’s that time of year again…the dead of winter when not much else is happening, so I do a cooking post! Like my other hobbies, my cooking interests keep evolving. Six months ago, I would have said my spouse and I were cheesetarians. We ate pasta regularly, and salads regularly, with plenty of cheese featured in both. Now? Again, it’s the dead of winter, so I don’t feel much like big leafy salads, and for some reason pasta has fallen off the rotation in favour of quinoa. We haven’t even been making omelets. So…next to no cheese. (Except cheesecake. That’s different.) Instead, we’ve been rocking stews and soups, the ultimate in coziness. We bought each other a Dutch oven for Christmas — those are the ceramic pots with an iron core that can go both on the stovetop and in the oven. Which means it’s perfect for browning your meat or sauteing your aromatics (new word for me!) and then throwing everything else into the same pot. Having a new kitchen toy, of course, has revitalized our kitchen game — at least temporarily. Disclaimer I: Those things are heavy (or maybe I’m just weak)! Ours is a 5 qt. pot, and I can only lift it when it’s mostly empty. Disclaimer II: We are not superhuman! We cook something big and ambitious once a week, twice at most. The rest of the time, we order in, or else we eat leftovers or premade food or something else that’s dead easy.…

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Clothes Make the Woman, Redux

This time last year, I blogged about how the pandemic was changing both my style tastes and my size and how I was adapting. This year…well, my wardrobe is still mostly in stay-at-home pandemic mode (as am I), but it continues to evolve… I’m still wearing a lot of athleisure, especially as the days heat up (here in Toronto we’ve had several heatwaves already). Reitmans has a wide size range and a variety of comfy leggings (and jeans); Icebreaker does the best merino t-shirts for both warm and cool weather; Tentree uses recycled polyester in their athletic line. I’m also slowly adding other items to meet my non-athleisure style needs. Really digging loose flowy tops in natural fibres — especially since I’ve at last discovered where to get tunic-length tops that are cut to skim over my decidedly not-pregnant round belly. Shout-out to Blue Sky Clothing! They also have comfy bike shorts in extended sizing. Since I have a terrible time finding shorts that fit me well and don’t pull in weird ways, I’m quite liking this leggings-meets-shorts trend (at least in my own house…ahem). To save my Northern European skin while gardening and walking, I’ve also picked up a couple of lightweight, oversized button-downs in organic cotton from MEC (last year) and hemp from Patagonia (this year). They go nicely with my straw hat. Coastal Grandma style, anyone? And I’m leaning into the colours and prints I love, that bring out my colouring and make me feel great. (Blue…

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Furry House Guest Incoming

This week’s excitement around here is that we’re getting ready to host our first house guest since the Before Times. Oh, and she’s a cat. See, friends of ours are traveling out of province (they’re less risk-averse than I am, and case numbers are still low across Canada even with Delta), and for various reasons it wasn’t practical to cat-sit at their place. So she’s coming to stay with us during their trip. Making things extra interesting is that nobody in my household has ever had a cat, dog, or rodent for a pet. I’ve certainly interacted with plenty of cats, courtesy of many friends and family members who have them, but I’ve never taken care of one. Thankfully, the folks I know who do have cats have been happy to give advice. So we’ve been cleaning under all the furniture and securing our one houseplant and taking stock of breakables. My home office is still a mess, but less so than usual (as I make glacial headway on the piles), and anyway I’m told that having lots of potential hiding places is actually a good thing. My husband is excited; he’s hoping this experience will be a gateway for him to talk me into permanent pet-ownership. (Not with this particular cat, of course. I rather think our friends’ little boy would like her back.) My in-laws are skeptical; they grew up in India, where cats live on the street and get fed if you’re feeling generous. I’m anxious, but…

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Clothes Make the Woman…Maybe

Style is a way to say who you are without having to speak. —Rachel Zoe Clothing has been one of the banes of my existence. As a teen and young adult, I had no sense of fashion and didn’t know how to acquire one. It doesn’t help that this was the ’90s, or that I didn’t have the money to do a lot of experimenting (or the inclination for thrifting). So I spent a lot of time feeling awkward and out of the loop. Not just because of my clothes, of course; I just had the general sense that I’d missed an instruction manual somewhere. Despite all that, I managed to start a professional career in a real office (after being chastised by my temp agency for taking a backpack to an interview…and here we pause to acknowledge that white-collar dress codes are deliberately classist, racist, and exclusionary). I realized I had to learn how to “look the part,” so I bought style magazines and signed up for an online style guide subscription, which helped a lot in demystifying the world of personal style and how to put an outfit together. I went through a phase of trying to wear blazers, dress pants, and pencil skirts, and trying to figure out how to find office-appropriate shoes that would stay on and also not kill my feet. (I finally settled on flat mary janes.) (Insert rant about women’s shoes, office-appropriate women’s bags, women’s fashion in general, pockets, and so on.) As…

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An Ode to Imperfect Friendships

Media depictions of friendship are a funny thing. Everyone in the movies or on TV seems to have one best friend, or maybe a tight-knit group of three or four (carefully chosen to be complementary, of course), who will be there to help out when you’re moving, mourning, celebrating, or anything in between. If you’re anything like me, not having a circle that looks like that can lead to feelings of inferiority. It certainly did when I was getting married in 2012 (and didn’t have a nice tidy squad of bridesmaids), when I’ve asked for in-person practical help and nobody volunteered, when I’ve been fighting depression and everything feels worse. But… I have a tight-knit community of online friends (including my fellow Turtleduckers) who cheerlead for my writing, listen patiently to my daily worries and complaints, and much, much more. I have a tight-knit community of contra dance friends who give the best hugs, belly laughs, moments of “flow” and play, and much, much more. (I got to dance four weekends in a row in February, including one entire weekend away that involved a hilarious carpool of 40something women, a hotel suite full of geeks, and lots of folks I only get to see once or twice a year. Those weekends got me through the month.) I have friends who come when I throw a party, even though I still feel like an awkward host. I have friends who invite me over to their messy house so we can order…

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Adulting II

This time last year, I was writing about how I accidentally became a community leader when all I meant to do was make some appointments (aka adulting) and clear the junk out of my home office. In the intervening year, I have: made those appointments — dental, medical, and financial things that needed doing, all sorted continued being a community leader, or at least organizer survived the shift from cubicles to an open office at my day job (being able to work from home part of the time has been essential to my sanity) turned 40 (I have not, however, cleared out my home office. Much.) 2020 started with some more big changes at the day job. Retirements and a shrinking team meant that a few colleagues and I needed to step up and acquire some new skills, fast. At the same time, we’ve got our hands full with a big, tricky project, which doesn’t help matters. I’ve spent all of January feeling waaay out of my depth. …and yet nothing has exploded, we’re keeping on top of things (so far…ask me in a month or two, ahahaha), and I think I’m impressing my manager and colleagues. It’s really not a comfortable spot to be in. I’m stressed and tired, and I’d much rather go back to my happy little status quo. But…I might just be rising to meet this challenge. In related news, last weekend my spouse and I had a house party, just a small gathering of friends.…

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That Time of Year

It’s that time of year for me. When friends text “hey, haven’t seen you!” and follow up a minute later with “right. End of July. See you in September!” When parents bump into me in the grocery store and suddenly I’m holding an impromptu “know your rights” discussion in the frozen section (next to the Haagen-Dasz “Spirits” ice cream, if you must know, and thankfully I don’t have any “Rum Tres Leches” in my cart yet to sit there melting and possibly drawing raised eyebrows.) The time of year when I’m having my friend in the passenger seat text cryptic messages like “FOSS kits” to my work email because I’m driving and can’t write it down but I really need to poke someone about that tomorrow. When I’m cruising all the back-to-school sales looking for the BEST deals because the more money I can save now, the more we can help out a parent in a bind later. When I’m at work emailing IT, checking on desks that should have arrived by now, and calling Facilities because the AC in the gym is still down–all at the same time. When I’m tracking down seemingly-random pieces of paper for HR and giving the copier a swift kick on the way past (I don’t actually kick it, but I am pretty quick at righting its wrongs.) We try, every year, to be ready. We do inventory and figure out what we need. We do research, and figure out where to buy it.…

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Misadventures in Decorating

I’m a firm believer in the importance of what I call “creative cross-training”–doing creative things that are not your primary hobby (or calling). It’s good for the brain, and it’s relaxing in a way that, say, writing a sequel isn’t. *ahem* But that doesn’t mean there are no challenges. Have you ever watched a home decorating show or flipped through a decor magazine? They make it look so easy. And yet… My spouse and I have been trying to turn our attic into a cozy sitting room / writing retreat space. It’s been a multi-year process. First the room had to be finished and refloored, then climate-controlled. Initially it was going to be a workout room that doubled as a guest room. We bought a daybed, a padded bench, curtains and storage, a decorative wall mirror that was also big enough to check your form on yoga poses. That worked for a while, but it wasn’t getting used enough in either capacity. The next plan was to create an at-home writing retreat. The rest of our house is fairly utilitarian or at least halfheartedly/haphazardly decorated, so I was excited to make one space that looked deliberately designed. I hopped on Pinterest and pinned a ton of cozy cabins and home libraries, lots of wood and an old-fashioned vibe that made me think “fantasy world”. Then the plan met reality. Even the scaled-down version turned out to be wayyy beyond our capacity to actually create. Did I mention this version of…

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Adulting

At the start of this year, I got back from vacation, looked around at the state of my home, and declared that January would be Adulting Month. What I had in mind was things like “make some appointments that I keep putting off” and “clear the junk out of my home office”. (I guess decluttering is the new weight loss resolution?) But apparently the universe didn’t get the memo. I’ve written before about how contra dance has helped me grow. Well, the past few months have presented a whole new challenge. See, I’m on the organizing committee for my local dance community. A few months ago, we started talking about changing how we do things. It’s a bit esoteric and not essential to my point here, so I won’t go into details, but suffice to say that it’s about inclusivity. (If you really want to know, read the fifth paragraph of my last post about contra.) Here’s where I admit that I was the one who officially got things moving (after months of unofficial talking). Suddenly I found myself on the front lines along with two other women. We were planning out how to introduce it in such a way that everyone felt heard and included, even the people who liked the status quo and had never thought about doing things differently. I was writing copy for our website and newsletter. I was vetting the survey that my co-planner put together. I was talking to other dancers to find out…

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