I might have just “fixed” the “it won’t drain” problem in our washing machine “by myself”! 

In 14 minutes, I’ll know. Let’s say 30 minutes, because we all know that front load washing machines lie about the minutes remaining. 

I tried being next level, like my partner Peter, and downloaded the LG Thinq app, but I think our washer is dumb. I debated whether it was wise to risk running a cycle after I did all the drain stuff. Peter would have tried harder to find a way to run a spin-only cycle first.  He is patient and meticulous. I, on the other hand, decided to channel my father, and bullishly started the cycle.

Now I’m sitting on the top of the closed toilet to keep a watchful eye.  So far, Speedwash: The Movie is humming along. In a half hour, I’ll either have clean towels or a flooded floor. Naturally, I’m hopeful for the former. 

Appliance draining, disgusting clean up jobs, and all matters mice are usually Peter’s domain. Sadly, he—our Director of Gross Departments— broke his arm on Thursday :( He innocently misstepped while box jumping, after having completed 55 successful jumps. My friend Alana says having a sports injury is way cooler than slipping in the shower. Sadly, the hurt is the same. 

We tag-teamed the washer repair. And I am actually thrilled to help. Peter did his usual web searches for video answers. I am the on-site appliance repair person. He talked me through the manual draining step over FaceTime. And told me how to clean the filter. After that, I flew solo as he had to go. Many lasagne pans full of water later. And after cleaning a very clogged filter, there are only “2” minutes left in the cycle…

I am not going to dance yet. 

1 minute…

No water on the floor. Vigorous spinning…

Ahhh…done! The machine is singing and I am dancing to the finish song. The washer may not be SMART but I am. And I learned that I can still handle some gross when needed! 

I landed in Montreal on Saturday evening, and couldn’t settle myself, even though I was with my long-time friend Monica. We were both hyper, or ungrounded. Or so it felt to me. We later blamed it on the heat, and worries about our planet warming up. But I knew, for me, it was more about leaving my responsibilities at home with Peter, and being away from L, who is at camp, and O who is going through transitions. I was thrown off by all my parts getting louder, as I took an “self-indulgent break”.  

The heat has proven itself a central character in my Montréal visit for sure. So too have sloth, greed, gluttony, and the rest of the gang of deadly sins, those loud self-judgy parts that live inside me. 

All the sins are on exhibit at Musée beaux-arts Montréal in an exhibition called Bad Girls (or Présumées coupables). This is what got me thinking about why I feel shame when I have too much fun, too much privilege, too much freedom. 

Have you ever felt badly for celebrating yourself, prioritizing rest over productivity, losing your cool, feeling jealous, acting on natural desires to have nice things, eat good food, or experience intimacy?

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. And yes.  

It had never occurred to me that the “seven deadly sins” were a Christian morality code, created in The Middle Ages. Nor did I know that the patriarchal ruling class so feared feminine power that they weaponized shame as a means of controlling it. 

The gallery was filled with images like the one below. I was interested both in the images themselves, all quite ugly depictions of women, and also in the print versions of the artist’s original drawings, mirror images, with some refinements made in turning them into prints.  

I saw the exhibit with Monica, but had another, seemingly unrelated but not unrelated at all, conversation over lunch today with my long-time amigas, Sonia and Karina. Our chat was about gender and sexuality. Our views are wide ranging and I found it all quite provocative. One cannot have highly intelligent women friends and not have their thoughts provoked, after all. 

But I’ll stick to the deadly sins for now. I find it sad that concepts started centuries ago, passed down through generations, can, centuries later, steer my ship. This nagging sense of guilt I carry, a sense that who I am is not enough or somehow wrong, plays too central a role in my life.

In the end, it’s been a wonderful, reconnecting, thought-provoking, thought-defending week. I’ve delighted. I’ve been stirred up. I’ve shared a lot, and I’ve kept quite a few thoughts to myself. I’ve felt joy. Guilt. A little shame. Even anger. 

But, my God, the gluttony was delicious. 

 

Peter told me this morning that my top three adjectives are: buggy, itchy and hot. Then he thought again and added thirsty. Does this not make you think of a complainy toddler more than a delightful woman? Haha. I smiled because it rings true. 

I don’t disagree that I am often itchy, hot and thirsty. And that I make much more of mosquito sightings and death count, post swatting, than he does. But I’d really rather be known for all the times I remark on the beauty of a flower, the incredible changing nature of clouds, the cleverness of writers, or the tastiness of my latest bite. 

Alas, there was just a bug buzzing in my ponytail. It was so distracting that I had to stand up to get it out. I am not joking. So while my coffee is delightful, it’s kind of buggy out too. 

Peter’s late father Norm—whom I sadly never got to meet—kept daily notes for 54 years. In 1990, he migrated his note taking to a single Microsoft Word file. At some point after his dad’s death, Peter was able to access the file, and the treasure trove of fascinating, and oft times banal, entries. 

I have smirked, at times, when Peter and his brothers read examples of the detailed things their father noted, like this bullet point from this day in 2017: 

• went to Physiolinks but I was too early so I went to the A&W in the mall for a coffee, started to drink it but it was too hot so left it in the car.

His notes didn’t have to be deep reflections to reveal how he was spending his time, what he cared about, what he was proud of, what he was troubled by. Eight years ago on this day that was the heat, some knee pain, and itchy legs at night.

I kept a daily journal for the first five years of Lali’s life. As I always intended it to be for her, it doesn’t have the full brunt of how parenting can break a person at times. Though, like Norm’s entries, it won’t be hard for her to read between the lines. 

I think I stopped writing when I could no longer get the beautiful Pantone "Colour of the Year" journals I was using. I surely regret that I made aesthetics more important than keeping track of our stories. 

Life is passing by quickly, and I cannot remember the extraordinary, let alone the ordinary. To remedy this a little, we popped into The Bookmark on the weekend and left with a gorgeous Some Lines a Day five year journal by Leuchtturm1917, thanks to help from the awesome Lori Cheverie, who has managed there for 35 years. 

We wrote some short notes in it last night to kick things off. I am excited to capture today too. I believe, perhaps naively, that together with Peter, we’ll keep it going and be able to see what we were up on July 6, 2025-2029. It is certainly in Peter’s genes to keep track! 

Here’s a draft:

• Sitting at The Black & White Café in St. Peter’s to write a blog post.
• Peter trying out his new yellow lens, which make him look quite different in a “I am Bono” kind of way.
• L gone to see E.
• Concerned about how O will adapt to upcoming changes that we believe will be really positive.
• Were planning to host Mom, Dad and B for a BBQ but the weather kept changing.
• About to walk on the Confed Trail for a half hour back to our car.
• Peter getting to see what being with someone lost in their blog writing is like.
• Very grateful for the pace of my life and its abundance. 

And to bring it back to Norm, I’ll add one more:

• 4:53 p.m. going to make a quick stop at the washroom before returning to the trail. 

In early June, Peter came home with a book called Tiny Experiments. And as I do with most books he brings home for us, I jumped the queue and read it first.

I liked it. It hit the spot for a whole bunch of reasons. Very often in family life, it is impossible to know what to do when I haven’t done something before. Parenting a teen is a first for me. Iterating on a supportive housing model that we created for our trans autistic daughter has thrown us many “what the eff do we do now?” curveballs

The risks can seem inflated, the path unclear. So the notion that we don’t have to solve the next ten years helped to diffuse our anxieties and tamper our reactive ambitions. The idea of tiny experiments also reminded me of the “toe in the water” concept from my leadership coaching days (From Immunity to Change by Kegan and Lahey).

Writing in this blog again has actually been a tiny experiment, or pact, to use the language from the book. I asked Peter if he’d be willing to take on a pact for two weeks if I would automatically say yes to whatever pact he proposed for me.

His was easy (well, easy for me). I asked him to start drinking at least 1.5 litres of water each day.  His baseline was coffee, a can of Bubly and a little water if he was thirsty or working out. He can write more on his experience. It is true that I used the pact idea to get him to change his behaviour in the hopes he would feel the health benefits.

Mine, chosen by him, was to write something courageous on my blog everyday. Hardly on par! I had last written more than a year ago and it was only to share some travel experiences. I was contractually bound to say yes. And I did appreciate the clear parameters.

In the pact world, the measurement is simply: did I or did I not (drink 1.5+ litres of water, write a post)? I agreed I would aim for courageous but added a caveat that writing again on a regular basis was already pactful enough.

Since I started on June 16th, I have published twelve posts and will shortly publish this one. That means I only missed 4/17 days. Some days I just wasn’t in the mood to share what was going on inside me. On the flip side, I have written 13 blog posts in a 2.5 week period after zero writing for a whole year. And of those, about half felt vulnerable and courageous.  Writing about my life felt purposeful (and sometimes indulgent). It wasn’t hard to remember to do it as I had made a promise to myself and an outward commitment to Peter. My writing is flowing more easily; and, I learned that I too can compose blog posts directly on my phone.

I only told one other person about the pact writing. As I was writing my first post from The Gallery Café, I blurted out what I was up to when Jessica, the owner, stopped to chat. It has been freeing to write without any feedback. Yet it was also important for me to write in the public domain to keep me on track. I am pretty sure I would have blown off journalling by day two or three. Right now I would be writing nothing about this in my journal, having dropped my pact! I’d have the guilt and nothing to show for it.

And so, I have completed this particular pact. I’m grateful to Peter for buying the book and saying yes to a pact of his own. It feels like a big success, as I feel more capable and less resistant. I intend to continue writing, but what to do from here? Just write blog posts everyday for the rest of my life? Hardly. Clearly I’ll need a new tiny experiment so I can pact it up!