Lemon and Water + large bees + work clothes

Apr 17

May I recommend

Warmish morning lemon water

Every morning, EVERY morning, I wake up and pour myself a glass of warmish tap water and then I plonk a piece of goddamn lemon in to it.

Do I have a single piece of medical evidence to support the value of this practice other than a mumbled “scurvy?” ? No.

Have I noticed any difference in my general health, skin smoothness or hair glossiness as a result of this practice? No.

Do I find the bright taste of lemon a delicious pop of flavour first thing in the a.m.? No. I mean, it’s a slice of lemon in warmish tap water, not a flipping cream soda. It’s fine.

Have I been doing this religiously since late November when I visited my old grad school friends, Jen and Chris, and they served me this? Yes.

Will I continue to do this every goddamn morning despite its questionable antecedents and dubious benefits? Yes.

Sweet Amy, why do you do this every morning, you might reasonably ask.
“An unearned and inexplicable smug sense of self-satisfaction,” I will answer.

As I chop a vivid, citrusy slice of lemon whilst waiting for the tap water to warm from icy to luke, I am suffused with a completely unwarranted belief that I am TAKING CARE OF MYSELF and also that I am exactly like an Instagram INFLUENCER.

Standing there in my kitchen with last night’s unwashed dishes filling the sink, braless, sleep-faced and wrestling with my daily morning-Covid-hypochondria, that goddamn glass of goddamn lemon water allows me to briefly feel like I am a glamorous and together-person who is ready to face anything this life has to throw at her. One simple glass of good old Ottawa tap water, coupled with an undoubtedly pesticide-laced slice of lemon is all that it takes to send me into a delusional fantasy about my own health and beauty practices.

Quite honestly, I don’t understand why everyone isn’t drinking warmish morning lemon water.

What’s your morning beverage? Tell me in the comments below!

Why do clothes hurt?

Am I done suffering for fashion?

I think we know the answer to this question… I wore a heel for the first time this week at my book launch and it basically crippled me. Fashion is ridiculous! Leggings for all, always!

At its heart, relaxed fashion is democratic, accommodating changes of mind, body and culture. It can be gender-neutral or nonbinary; and it’s body inclusive, flattering diverse shapes, weights and sizes. It’s also potentially a way to do more with less. Many women mentioned relying on the same limited number of items kept in steady rotation. Ms. Cason returns routinely to the same five pairs of Eddie Bauer pants in various colors, she said.

Tell me about the clothes you will no longer wear in the comments below!

Eat the Rich

Nine Ways to Imagine Jeff Bezos’ Wealth

Honestly, we need a titch of socialism up in here…

The average full-time Amazon employee made $37,930 in 2020. In order to accumulate as much money as Bezos ($172 billion) ... an employee would have had to start working in the Pliocene Epoch (4.5 million years ago, when hominids had just started standing on two feet!).

He’s just got too much money, right? Argue the case for unrestrained capitalism in the comments below!

Not-so-extinct bees!

The Parable of the World’s Largest Bee

Okay, I wouldn’t want to actually run into this bee, which is the size of a man’s thumb, but I’m really HAPPY it’s still kicking around.

I also have great sympathy for this researcher, who does NOT like the heat…

The bee liked to make its home in termite nests so the modern-day adventurers took a boat to Halmahera, the largest of the North Maluku islands, and met with the head of the village where the bee was last seen to help locate the most likely nests. The next five, futile, days were spent trudging around fragmented forest looking for nests and “almost dying of heat stroke,” Wyman recalls.

Talk about bees in the comments below!

Book News!

Good ole Honeybee Emeralds had kind of a rocky launch, with supply chain issues messing up delivery. Most books have gotten where they needed to go, but because the publisher is in the States, it’s been a bit trickier to get them to Canada. This is all totally beyond my control, which is stressful but hopefully they’ll get into readers hands - eventually.

This week I had an amazing book launch event at the wonderful Perfect Books in Ottawa. It was so much fun to see people in person (masked!) again and talk books and reading and writing!

Thanks so much to everyone who has bought Honeybee and huge thanks to those who have read it and reached out! It’s so nice to hear from you and know that this story that I dreamed up is now out there in the world, and maybe making you laugh or even cry (Oh my God, if I made you cry, please tell me!)

There’s another event at Brome Lake Books on April 30th. Come out and say “hi!”

I’m hard at work on new book, Honor the Dead (tentative title) which will be part of the Dominion Archives Mystery series. The first of those, kind of a prequel, will be published in the fall. It’s called The Foulest Things.