13 Things Making My Life Better This Quarter (April-June 2020)

Fellow Canadian? Here’s another collection of links for places to support Black Lives Matter in and outside Canada, and great resources for finding Black-owned businesses in Toronto. I’ve committed to be more mindful about where I spend my money–it’s difficult, especially during a pandemic, but I’m getting there!

Apart from the reads I mention below, I also recommend Monique W. Morris’s Pushout (non-fiction). If you love speculative fiction like I do, join me in checking out some of these books. Colson Whitehead’s writing was amazing in The Underground Railroad, so I’m especially excited to read The Intuitionist.

You don’t need me to tell you that these three months have been, well, different. To me, that’s what makes it more important to take joy where I can and notice the little things that have made life more pleasant. Even if the happiness baseline is pretty low for almost all of us right now, it’s still nice to notice the things that make it perk up a tad.

I also wanted to focus on the things that are open to other folks, not just me. So although I’m very, very grateful to have, for example, wonderful friends who picked up our groceries when we were under strict quarantine (thanks, JB and FC); generous and kind building staff and condo volunteers who were ready to help us out during that period; and supportive, connected families, those aren’t exactly things that anyone reading this can order online. Instead, I’ve tried to stick with pastimes, practices, and resources that are widely available.

Such as…

Exercise

1. Resistance bands

Exercise keeps me feeling OK-adjacent, and resistance bands help a lot with that exercise. I feel like I’m pushing my muscles and learning new ways to challenge myself. And because I’ve nattered on about them in, like, every blog entry I’ve written since social distancing started, that, as Forrest Gump would say, is all I have to say about that.

2. Pull-up bar

The bane of Husband’s existence (in that it rests at exactly his head height in our laundry-room doorway), our new pull-up bar has been helping us both get in some exercise. I’m kinda jealous that Husband is naturally at the point I reached only after a whole year of building my upper-body strength. The apparatus rests on the door frame, so it’s easy to take it down if we need to. Theoretically, it folds up so you can hang it in a closet like clothes on a hanger, but we haven’t tested that yet.

3. Yoga mat

I bought a yoga mat way back in March right before the shutdown began. It lived in post-office limbo until a few weeks ago when we finally felt okay to go pick it up. Until then, I’d been making do with carpets and towels and these foam puzzle-pieces Husband bought from the dollar store to make into costume armor. I was starting to feel like even buying a yoga mat had been a waste of money.

It was not. The actual mat is ten times better than any of those other options. It’s thicker, it grips the floor better, and it’s long enough for my whole body when I’m doing planks or crunches. (Or, I guess, yoga.)

4. Walking around the apartment

In my adolescence and early twenties, I paced a lot, especially when listening to music. As I got into a more intense gym routine and spent more of my day walking outside, I stopped pacing as much. However, in the middle of the first wave of COVID-19, it occurred to me that I… could still pace so I’d feel more physically normal? And, since said pacing would be inside, I could read at the same time without worrying about walking into traffic? So now, every once in a while, I walk a couple kilometres back and forth around the apartment. It does seem to help (at least, I seem to fall asleep more easily).

(And, yes, it would be nicer to walk outside, but we live on the twenty-first floor. To get downstairs, I have to share a small elevator or stairwell with other residents, and to minimize risk to them and me, I try not to leave the apartment unless I have to.)(Also, as noted above: can’t read while walking outside!)

5. YouTube exercise videos

I know me. There is zero chance I will challenge myself as hard on my own as I will challenge myself in a class with a coach. IRL, classes are often too difficult for me to attend, on account of various joint/nerve/muscle pain issues that sometimes restrict my ability to follow along–I’ve had to quit even ones I enjoyed because the impact on, say, my bad knees was just too much. Luckily, YouTube provideth.

I’ve been enjoying following along on a few different channels, mostly picking stuff back up. For example, I took excellent boxing lessons for years until the aforementioned knee impact got to be overwhelming; now, I’ve whipped out my old gloves and am following along with shadow-boxing videos from NateBowerFitness (bonus warm fuzzies, I totally recognize at least one of the Toronto video backgrounds). As a kid, I got to orange belt in taekwondo before I broke my finger at summer camp and never returned to lessons; now, I’m following along with Global Martial Arts University (with intentions of trying their karate and other streams once I work my way through this one). And, like everyone and their pet influencer, I’m stretching with Yoga With Adriene for my active rest day.

Entertainment

6. Yoshi’s Crafted World (Nintendo Switch game)

Yoshi’s Crafted World is both adorable and forgiving, which makes it a great break from marking, writing, figuring out groceries, and just about anything else. The platforming is fun, and finding collectibles can be challenging. But nothing is bite-your-nails tense, which suits me just fine these days.

7. Bravely Second: End Layer (Nintendo 3DS game)

This JRPG sequel to Bravely Default improves a lot of the mechanics from the original, and I kinda like the new characters better. Your central protagonist, Yew, is in charge of protecting the pope/queen/yeah it’s kinda of weird, and must set off on a quest when she is kidnapped by a mysterious kaiser.

Without spoiling anything, I was disappointed that the demo wasn’t more closely tied to the full game, but it did make some early-on events much more emotionally charged. If you intend to play this, I’d recommend playing the demo in full first. Also, you don’t need to play Bravely Default first to follow along, and Bravely Second somewhat improbably avoids majorly spoiling its prequel in case you change your mind afterward.

8. Toronto Public Library online holdings

The public library has been my number-one source of all things entertainment. They have far, far too many online resources for me to list, but here are the ones I’ve been using most.

On Overdrive, I’ve been reading books like: All Systems Red by Martha Wells (The Murderbot Diaries #1), The Invisible Library by Genevieve Cogman (The Invisible Library #1), Pretty as a Picture by Elizabeth Little, False Value by Ben Aaronovitch (Rivers of London, #8), The Rise of Kyoshi by F. C. Yee (The Kyoshi Novels #1), and The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton.

On Hoopla, I’ve found plenty of great TV, movies, and music, but I’ve mainly been borrowing comics. I loved catching up on Gunnerkrigg Court, and I really enjoyed Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys: The Big Lie, a noir-ish re-imagining of the teen sleuths, along with tongue-in-cheek references to their less popular counterparts like Tom Swift and the Bobbsey twins.

On RBDigital, I’ve been flipping through magazines from Discover special issues on cuteness to The Atlantic to Men’s Health (hey, when you want to build muscle and wear conventionally masculine fashion, it’s great fun no matter your gender) to pretty much every cooking magazine that has pictures and doesn’t waste too much time propagating unhealthy ideas about “good” and “bad” foods.

Finally, I was delighted to learn that the library has a temporary subscription to videos of dozens of recorded theatre shows. I’m looking forward to catching One Man, Two Guv’nors and Treasure Island before the end of July, when it all expires, and I just noticed they have Sondheim shows too!

9. By Jeeves (musical by Sir Andrew Lloyd Weber, filmed version)

So, remember how I wrote about not liking misunderstandings and cringe comedy? I still had that problem with this musical, a farcical stage adaptation of Jeeves & Wooster that involves Bertie Wooster accidentally and concurrently swapping identities no fewer than three times (maybe more–I didn’t exactly take notes). But it was silly and absurd and very much poking fun at Posh White People–and, most importantly, had some catchy songs.

In general, the YouTube channel The Shows Must Go On has been posting recorded musicals every weekend to raise funds for various COVID and theatre charities. There are also links to buy digital copies of the shows they’ve posted.

10. Globe Theatre performances

I’m lucky to have been able to visit The Globe a few times in person, and watching some of their videos on their YouTube channel is almost as good (and considerably more air-conditioned, at least in my apartment). Honestly, I don’t really sit down and watch through the videos on my own, but I do enjoy clips of my favourite scenes.

11. The X Files seasons 10 and 11 (comic series)

The fact that there is now a vastly different TV version of seasons 10 and 11 (relationship to the comics similar to the relationship of Star Wars VII-IX to the Star Wars Extended Universe, i.e. plugging ears and pretending it never existed) only makes the comics seasons feel so much better. This is the content I’m here for: recurring characters thrown in willy-nilly without actor scheduling problems; no horrifying lack of understanding that rape is rape or transphobic bullshit; undoing some of the nonsensical shit that happened in Season 9 in plausible in-universe ways.

True, I’m not sure I really needed more lore on some of the Monsters of the Week that get dredged up and expanded, but it’s all balanced out with a (no spoilers) familiar Big Bad (or are they???) who is scary and exciting and completely fits with original canon.

Practical

12. Farm deliveries

Husband and I are very, very fortunate to be able to afford produce, dairy, and meat delivery from businesses connected to local farms. We get reliable access to delicious foods, we support the local small businesses that deliver and sell those foods, and we support the farms too: win-win-win. I don’t know how the future will shake out, since I think the two delivery services we’re using became available only when the COVID-19 shutdowns forced them to expand their business model to private customers in our area. But we are grateful that we’re able to rely on them now.

In our area and both able and interested? Try them out: West Side Beef and Fruit Suite.

13. Good wireless earbuds

I am very fortunate to be able to work and learn from home via video conference, but I learned very quickly that my current hardware wasn’t up to the task. Over-ear headphones hurt the crown of my head after about half an hour. Earbuds are better, but my only reliable ones were wired, which tethered me too close to my camera and monitor. So I decided to bite the bullet and get some well reviewed wireless earbuds to use on calls and in lectures: these ones. I like them a lot–they fit well, connect easily, and have handy customizable physical buttons for functions like “skip” or “hang up.” They still get uncomfortable after about an hour, but that’s a lot longer than any other option I’ve tried.