Icy hot.

I’ve had some luck with solutions presenting themselves after I’ve complained about something on my blog.

Case in point:

There will be no DIY calendar this year. My 2026 Aurora Borealis calendar ensures I can focus on steaming my hams to perfection.

My first road run in Victoria was a success and didn’t result in a route that resembled a white power symbol. Despite that, I’ve chosen to keep my runs private on Strava for now. I’d rather be sure it’s an activity I can commit to doing with some semblance of regularity. Love me for my mind, not my ridiculous lactate threshold.

In the same vein, I wasn’t about to declare myself a fan of Heated Rivalry after the first episode.

(It is about to get hot in here.)

My initial impression, as shared with Zoée via WhatsApp, was:

“…still on the fence. The story isn’t very deep to start with. I’m impressed at how well the actors have managed to cover their dicks by strategically placing their legs to block out the suggestion of a boner.”

At the time, I was still trying to get into the final season of Stranger Things. My thought process while watching Season 5 was something like:

“Who’s Eddie?”

“Oh yeah, I forgot Robin was gay.”

“Mike has another sister?”

By the fourth episode, I conceded that I needed to rewatch the series from the start to make sense of the finale. I’d already run out of episodes of the 6th season of Canada’s Drag Race to watch, so what was my alternative?

Every time I turned on Zoée’s tv, I was faced with two hot guys facing off.

17-year-old Laura would have been all over this, but in secret. Unbeknownst to everyone around me, I was into watching hockey for the guys just as much as I was for the game. The Buffalo Sabres were my favourite team… specifically because they had the hottest guys. (My secret was well-guarded by the fact that they also happened to be among the best in the league.)

This is the first time I’ve admitted to being a closeted “puck bunny”. This is the kind of juicy bits and bobs people who only follow me on Strava are missing out on.

My secret puck bunny era was relatively short-lived. At some point, I realized there were plenty of other sports where the guys were better optimized for lusting over, like diving and wrestling, than one that involved a lot of padding.

Things are even different 25 years later: perimenopause has killed my libido. Of all the symptoms brought on by perimenopause, this one is the least shitty, only because it happens to be convenient. Guys kind of gross me out right now, so I have no desire to dip my toes into the dating cesspool.

Relevant quote from All Fours:

“…I pulled one of his fingers to my lips and he pushed it into my mouth. Throughout my life men had been pushing their big fingers into my mouth and although I went along with it, I always thought, Are you out of your mind? What should I put in there next? Your shoe? How about I just lick the pavement?”

I have no experience dating women, so the appallingly incorrect logic of one’s hands being clean as long as there’s no visible dirt may not be gender-specific.

Zoée, via WhatsApp:

“Did the show make you horny at all or has perimenopause truly sucked every drop of horniness?”

It pretty much has. However, I also wasn’t like, “Yeah, guys still gross me out.”

The chemistry between Ilya and Shane kept me engaged until the fourth episode. Quotes such as “The banana makes a big difference, I think,” delighted me. Also, I was doing my part to support the Canadian economy!

The closest I came to clutching my pearls was at a close-up shot of Scott Hunter’s feet:

Me, to Zoée via WhatsApp:

“He put the right foot sock on his left foot!”

This isn’t why I haven’t made it to the last two episodes of the show: I simply ran out of time. I wasted too much time trying to understand what was going on in Hawkins and The Upside Down.

Feeding Ghosts, the graphic novel I finished moments before I got whisked away to the ferry terminal in Tsawwassen, was not a waste of time.

In this multi-layered memoir, the author, Tessa Hulls, examines how her grandmother’s trauma influenced her mother’s life and, in turn, shaped her own identity. Indeed, generational trauma is real. Hulls goes even deeper by providing historical context about the suffering endured by the people of China, not just her grandmother, under Mao Zedong’s rule.

Overall, I found Feeding Ghosts to be a better, more relatable memoir than Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential. My only criticism is the trite symbolism throughout the book, eg. Hulls’ illustrations of herself as a marionette to represent feelings of being controlled or as a cowboy to represent her independence.

Then again, do I really need another obscure symbol like Orwell’s coral-encased paperweight in 1984 to spoil my bibliophilia for years? Corny symbols aside, panels such as this one conjured warm fuzzy memories of discovering the school library’s collection of VC Andrews novels.

Perhaps tales of satanic sex parties are what I need to revive my libido?