By the time this post goes live, I’ll be on a plane on my way to BC for the Storytellers of Canada- Conteurs du Canada conference.
I’m looking forward to the conference and to seeing my friends and telling/talking about stories for DAYS but I always feel apprehensive before I travel.
I’m not afraid to fly or anything like that. It’s the disrupted schedule, the lack of control over my day, the eating at weird times, the crowds of people, the change in time zones…that’s what gets me.
And all of that is fairly unavoidable.
BUT
Then I remembered that the last time the conference was in BC my travel schedule was waaaaaaaay worse and I was miserable on the way up but I actually did ok on the way home.
And, sure, part of it was the fact that I was on my way home but, after the frustrating trip on the way there, I had decided to take really good care of myself on the return trip and it made a huge difference.
So, what did ‘taking really good care of myself’ mean in that context?
I brought some really filling snacks so I had a bit more control over when I ate.
I made sure to keep my water bottle full.
I did stretches and yoga frequently and did some walking in each airport.*
I planned something to do for each hour of the trip (I didn’t have to do it but having a plan made me less fidgety and irritated.)
And that plan seems really appealing to me right now.
In fact, once I thought about it, I immediately started feeling better about the long trip and I could focus more on the fun that awaits me on the other end.
So, let’s see how my plan works out, hey?
I’ll update you later tomorrow.
*Yes, I always *could* stretch or walk at any point but this was me being proactively deliberate about it.
How many posts? May ends as one of the blog’s biggest months so far in 2026 — 35+ posts across five weeks.
Who blogged? Sam, Catherine, Christine, Nat, Diane, Nicole, Elan, Martha, Mina, and our newest blogger, and long-time commentator, Winnie.
Some of the May themes:
Diane’s recovery arc continued. April ended with Diane writing from the hospital. May picked up right there. Walking Walking Walking documented her cardiac rehab journey — routes mapped around the neighbourhood, a trip to the tulip festival with Florence, and the grumpy energy of walking because it’s what’s permitted. By mid-month she’d turned a corner: Go Sports Ball! found her on her way to an Ottawa-Montreal PWHL playoff game, writing about women’s professional hockey having a moment.
Nat enters retirement. Nat is now a month into retirement and still figuring out where the time goes. Little and Often, the SAG post for the Flèche, and the Victoria Day gardening blitz (13,000 steps without meaning to) all tracked the early weeks. Then this week, Nat ponders the unpaid time economy — a reflection on how retirement reveals all the invisible labour women do: logistics of longevity, care for family, community fundraising, and the simple question of where “free” time actually goes.
Elan from the Azores.Scouts and Sweeps in Group Fun told the story of an e-bike adventure on the volcanic island of Faial — fog, battery anxiety, 330 metres of elevation — and became a meditation on the invisible labour of the people who hold a group together.
Christine on momentum and hips.Moving more makes Christine want to move more and the hip mobility experiment — trying six different YouTube videos to see which ones her hips actually like — practical, honest, and non-prescriptive. That’s Christine’s way.
The research thread. Both Catherine and Sam brought fit, feminist takes on current research — engaging with the evidence critically rather than just amplifying headlines.
Catherine, a public health ethicist by training, put that expertise to work in Bad News/Good News About the Hantavirus Outbreak — an explainer on the Andes virus outbreak that traced through what the science actually showed, who was genuinely at risk, and where the media coverage was getting ahead of itself. Sam dove into two new meta-analyses in Exercise Snacks: What the Latest Research Actually Shows — following up after the studies kept floating across her fitness-heavy social media feed. The post broke down what the evidence actually supports (improved cardiorespiratory fitness for inactive adults; real short-term blood flow benefits from breaking up sitting time) versus what it doesn’t, and closed with the line “I trust research that tells me what it doesn’t know, not just what it does.”
Sunday marked my 200th workout in the 226 Workouts in 2026 Facebook group.I’d set my own goal as 400, and I can’t quite believe I’m halfway there just five months into the year.
Now, that’s largely because I count long dog walks and now that my knees are better, Cheddar and I have been doing more of those. See, for example, Sam and Cheddar’s Big day at the beach.
I don’t count every dog walk. Purely utilitarian trips around the block don’t count. My personal rule is that they have to be long enough to trigger my Garmin activity tracker–that’s 15 minutes. But what I like best about the number of workouts in a year group is that you get to decide what counts.
For me, if counting a thing is motivational, I count it. I counted all of my physio sessions before and after knee surgery too for the same reason.
Workout 200 was a morning ride around Lunenburg in which Sarah and I seemed to be recreating our last year’s trip to New Zealand by riding up and down very steep streets, followed by sketchy single track overlooking the ocean! We walked our bikes both on some hills in the town of Lunenburg and on a rocky stretch on the path on top of the hill beside the sea. Old times!
I bought a thing this past weekend, an under-the-desk walking pad.
I’m a long-time fan of standing desks but in recent years, through knee surgery, I haven’t used the standing option as much I used to. Lately though I’m back at it
Lately, I’ve been reading more and more about the benefits of breaking up your day with short walks. Read here for example. But with my big busy job I can’t always get away from my office.
What’s the difference between a walking pad and a treadmill?
A walking pad is for staying gently active during a workday without breaking a sweat. It’s not that sturdy and can only go at walking pace. Mine has an adjustable incline but you need to adjust it manually.
A treadmill is for actual cardio exercise. If you want to run or get your heart rate up significantly, you need a treadmill not a walking pad.
But if like me, you just want to avoid sitting for 8 hours straight, a walking pad does the job nicely — and fits easily under a standing desk.
Also, there’s the not-so-small matter of price. My little walking pad was under $200, and treadmills are more like $1000 and up.
Oh, and noise. Walking pads are also much quieter than full-on treadmills— a real office consideration.
How am I using it so far? Yesterday I did a mix of standing, sitting and walking. I liked the variety. It’s easy to walk during meetings or when reviewing documents. More serious reading, and definitely writing, require, for me, staying still.
My 2026 word of the year is Expand, and it turns out that includes expanding what counts as movement during a desk-heavy day
How about you? Have you tried one of these things? At home or at the office? What do you make of it?
It is a well-known fact among everyone who’s ever met me knows that I’m not a morning person. I approach the morning with reluctance, suspicion and movement aversion. Coffee is my morning cardio.
So imagine my reaction to this article from Outside magazine proposing the activity of (I can barely bring myself to type this, much less contemplate doing it) jumping 50 times in the morning. For health.
Oh no indeed. Thanks Heather W from Unsplash.
The folks from Outside do cite studies from actual respectable sports fitness journals promoting the benefits of what they can “jump training”, which, while unpleasant-sounding to me, is quite preferable to “jumping 50 times first thing in the morning”.
Jumping a lot in rapid succession apparently:
increases bone density
builds muscle
promotes lymphatic drainage
improves circulation
wakes you up (like that’s a health benefit– hmphf)
Okay, I get that “science” says morning jumping is a good idea. However, I propose some alternative morning regimens that carry their own benefits. Here’s a preliminary list that I worked up, but feel free to add your own ideas. And, as always, sharing is caring.
10. Wonder what day it is.
9. Hit the snooze button. Repeat.
8. Try to make sense of the snatches of dream that are still in your awareness.
7. Listen to the morning sounds of your house and neighborhood.
6. See how long you can stay in bed while pretending you don’t have to pee.
5. Ponder what you might like for breakfast, eventually.
4. Listen to a morning meditation, sort of trying to meditate, but not really.
3. Snuggle in bed with a pet, a loved one, or (in my case) one of several Squishmallows.
2. Accept a cup of coffee brought to you by someone who knows how to make coffee the way you like it.
1. Roll over and go back to sleep, for god’s sake!
Having stopped spending time being paid to do things has me thinking a lot about my “free” time and how I’m investing it in my fitness goals as well as helping others.
Working out
Gym memberships and classes are times when we pay others so we can protect our unpaid time to invest in our well-being and fitness. It’s something many of the bloggers and readers can identify with, ensuring we dedicate time to our fitness and well-being.
In relationships with partners, parents, children and friends the uneven burden of care still exists with women and femme folks shouldering most of the work.
Logistics of Longevity
From booking of medical and dental appointments to tracking how much extended benefit coverage is left for a massage or physiotherapy for the family, it’s often women doing that work in our unpaid time.
Sometimes my support of our family’s fitness goals looks like running to the bike shop each week getting tire irons, tubes, and yet another pair of gloves. Where are the gloves going?
Other times it is meal planning, groceries, sharing garden bounty with friends and preserving food.
It is also sorting through piles of mismatched socks. Sam introduced me to The Annual Mating of the Socks one year and I continue to do it each fall. It’s the time of year when I reach for socks and can’t find them.
In spring, I can never find my cycling gloves. Just one, lonely white light weight cycling glove sitting among the pile of larger, black, heavy duty ones Michel favours.
Health and Philanthropy
Twenty years ago I remember organizing the Canadian Cancer Society door to door campaign. This fundraising was built on the availability of women in rural communities organizing their neighbourhoods into teams. A team captain, often a woman who also ran the women’s auxiliary at the legion, the church fundraisers as well as Heart and Stroke, Diabetes Canada and our daffodil days fundraisers.
These women organized and collected millions of dollars, often $5 at a time. They would dutifully write out each paper receipt, balance books, and provide reporting. It was a lot. As more women needed to work off the farm or outside of the home they no longer had the unpaid time to organize door to door campaigns. Besides, no one was home to answer the door anymore. So these vital fundraising campaigns gave way to other means of gathering funds.
Where my “free” time goes
In the fourth week of my retirement I’ve helped a friend in her garden, driven another to a medical appointment, and had a doctor’s appointment for myself. I provided support to both of my adult childeren who are going through all the things people in their mid to late 20s go through.
My road bike, Ethyl, tucked in a toilet stall on Sunday.
I did find time for cycling Sunday, Friday and this morning. My daily dog walks with Michel continue to ensure I get lots of movement in my day.
My commuter bike, Myrna, showing off our haul of wild garlic from a trip on Friday.
I hosted my writing friends and we are ensuring we stay focused on getting more writing done. I’m pretty sure blog posts count.
Family Matters
Tomorrow I’m packing my bag to head to New Brunswick for my grandmother’s interment and visit with my parents. My kids are joining me. While down east I am going to ask that someone have a marriage or a baby so I can have a happy excuse to travel rather than another sad one.
I am only able to go see my family because I am retired. Otherwise, I would have already used up most of my vacation. It is the point of having more unpaid time, to be there for my family.
I’m still working on finding the balance between my needs and everyone else’s. My friend Net reassured me that after a few months I will find a more sustainable pace in retirement. I hope she’s right!
I read Sam’s post, the one about fitting into a bandeau. I launched into what was turning into a rather long comment, checked in with Sam, and she advised me to write more as a post. So here’s where my comment started:
Yes! Yes! Yes! I rushed over to your age 74 post – I am 74. All of these pointers towards being less judgmental are SO important. At my age, my fitness level is close to what it was when I was 20, better than when I was 30. But one of my very closest friends has an auto-immune condition that began when she was about 4. By the time we met – high school – she was frozen into a sitting position. No loss of control, just joints that arthritis had taken over & shut down. Fitness, as most of us can see it, is simply not an option. We’ve been friends for over 60 years now & watching how she is received in public settings is endlessly disturbing.
Going on from the already too long comment: She and I might pose for the guy who likes to compare women at age 74 – those who are body builders & look the part next to those who are slumped in wheelchairs. Well, not really. I don’t look at all like a body builder. But I can ride my bike pretty much anywhere; she needs help turning over in bed. I find a comparison intended to push fitness to be especially distressing.
Remember, her illness had frozen her in a sitting position. Her family is tall; she’s not. But she went through college, went on to get a masters, went on to complete the course work for a PhD; health kept her from being able to write a dissertation while working full time. She was a bilingual speech therapist in a large, complicated public school system. Most of her working life was spent doing the intake work for kids with special needs (another category we have a very hard time defining and naming).
So, I hope we can all keep reminding ourselves – and Sam can keep reminding us in so many great ways – that categorizing people by appearance, short of looking for a cheerful girl with curly red hair to play Annie, is very unlikely to be fair or meaningful. No, scratch even that little exception. I am thinking of P.G. Wodehouse’s Uncle Fred, who claimed he could play the part of a parrot “on broad, artistic lines.” So Annie can have brown hair. Or be played by a boy.
PS I realized I had only talked about fitness on my couple of posts here, but feminism is the other key component. I had begun to put together a little list of experiences that helped to cement feminism in my mind (not that it needed any cement). So here’s one of the funny ones. It’s all about appearances, as it turned out.
I was at the gym at an abs & core class. Another member in the class was a fiercely competitive guy. “Hey, let’s go run up to Coit Tower at lunchtime!” was an offer he often put out. That’s a very steep, not short hill in San Francsico. So when the teacher said, “Go find the weights that are right for you. We’ll be doing rowing in plank position today,” I went over and picked a pair of 20 pound weights. Competitive guy came over and very kindly (he thought) told me I had the wrong weights. He brought me a couple of 5s & a couple of 10s. I just thanked him & held onto my 20s. When the time came, & he saw me happily using the 20s, I got some serious side-eye. And some serious satisfaction. He was working hard with 10s. He was about 10 years younger than I was. And a guy. A very athletic guy.
A picture of my friend from behind (didn’t get permission to show any faces – this was a high school reunion).
And picture, nothing to do with the post. Bruce and me standing at the summit of Mt. Ventoux, France, after a long climb (much more challenging than those 20 pound weights)!
Bio: I am a lifelong Californian. My mother and father were not born here but moved to the state as small children. I have two grown daughters and five wonderful grandchildren. I spent my working life working at, and eventually running, the family insurance business. My father had introduced many employee benefits – sabbatical starting in 1970, optional four-day work week in 1972, elimination of all official work time rules in 1974. Adults like to be treated as adults, and people tended to stay a long time, so it was a very pleasant working environment with key elements of trust and respect. I also served on a couple of independent school boards, one a strong academic school serving grades 6-12, one a school designed to start helping city kids who had suffered the ongoing effects of racism & poverty to find opportunities they might not as easily discover without support. I live at a Lifetime Care Community where I serve on the finance committee and chair the sustainability committee. I also plan to join the newly formed fitness committee. And for fun, I have ridden my bicycle across North America. Twice.
These are the days when I’m glad to know some really good epidemiologists. The planet is warming, global travel is surging, and bad buggies are on the move. No, not these kinds of buggies:
Dune, beach and horse and buggy. None of them infectious, as far as I know.
Nope. I’m taking about these buggies:
Lyme bacteria, the current Ebola virus, and the Andes hanta virus– colorful but dangerous.
I thought I might post some updates from the aforementioned really-good-epi folks, as it’s sometimes overwhelming to try to keep up with global health news and hard to know which sources to trust. I’m not a doctor (not the medical kind, anyway), but my posted updates are from sources *I* trust– international news outlets, the WHO (World Health Organization), and YLE (Your Local Epidemiologist) substack (which pulls its info from the most reliable technical sources).
According to the European CDC, as of 26 May there are a total of 13 cases (11 confirmed) of hantavirus. One new case has been confirmed since the last update. There are no new deaths. All quarantined persons in North America are still negative. There’s a long (45 day) incubation period, but we’re at the median period now. This means if you weren’t on that ship, you are almost certainly in the clear. Color me not worried.
My apologies if I’ve used the pineapple with sun glasses and party hat recently, but it personifies non-worry to me right now.
Second: There’s an Ebola outbreak in The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Uganda. According to YLE, there are more than 1000 cases so far in DRC, which experts believe is an undercount. Why? For wonky epidemiological reasons:
positive test rate is 50%
At most 20% of contacts are being traced right now
They’ve only been really testing for a week, and it’s a lot-a-lot of cases for one week
Cases are spread out over 16 different health zones, so containment is harder
You might be wondering, what are the Centers for Disease Control and the US government doing to help contain this outbreak and support and treat those who are affected by Ebola (which has an average case fatality rate of 50%)?
During the 2013–2016 Ebola outbreak in West Africa, the US and Canadian governments played major roles in sending public health teams, supplies, health workers, setting up treatment centers, and providing support, along with the WHO and dozens of other countries. More than 11,000 people died of Ebola, with another 17,000 surviving it.
In 2026, the situation is quite different. Canada is providing more than $8M in international assistance funding though a bunch of governmental and non-governmental organizations. This is in addition to its annual $150–200M in foreign aid. See here for latest details.
The US government, after cutting foreign aid to the DRC by 75% (affecting its public health and other necessary infrastructures), is releasing $80M to various organizations overseen by the UN and various NGOs (non-governmental organizations).
However, the big emphasis by the Trump administration is that no American contracting Ebola (including those health workers its sending to Africa) will be returned to the US for treatment (in one of the several world-class health centers with top-level bio-containment.) Instead, according to the New York Times,
The Trump administration plans to send to Kenya U.S. citizens exposed to the Ebola virus rather than bring them home for observation and treatment, according to three people with knowledge of the plans.
The approach is a stark contrast to the way previous administrations responded to outbreaks, during which health care workers and other U.S. citizens exposed to the virus were brought home to be treated at specialized medical units. The administration this month flew an American doctor who developed symptoms to a hospital in Germany, and transported six other Americans for monitoring in Germany and the Czech Republic.
According to the substack by Dr. Craig Spencer (the physician who got Ebola in 2014 while working for MSF/Medicins Sans Frontieres/Doctors Without Borders and WAS transported to the US for treatment, and recovered):
The government is training a few dozen Public Health Service officers — uniformed members of the U.S. commissioned corps — to deploy to Kenya to staff it. These are people we send under orders, often to crises, disasters, and outbreaks. And under this plan, if one of them is exposed, or falls ill, the government apparently does not intend to bring them home either.
So, to sum up: for this Ebola outbreak, the risk to the North American public is very very low. But, the risk to global health overall is substantial. Also, the risk to American and other health workers, deployed military doing humanitarian work, and UN personnel os higher than it needs to be because the US is refusing to take care of them in our own world-class medical facilities.
So, am I worried about me or others in North American getting Ebola? No. Am I worried about the damage my country’s leaders are doing to global healthcare capacity, the mission of international health workers, and citizens of all countries affected by this outbreak? YES. You bet I am.
Third and finally, there are the ticks. It turns out that tick numbers are declining in the Northeast and Midwest at this point in 2026. YLE annoted this very nice CDC graph to show where we are:
The blue-green line is tick-related ED visits this year, and we are about at peak for the year, and it’s lower this year. I mean, that’s something.
However, tick-borne diseases are in general on the upswing, so we all need to be careful. Here are more YLE tips:
Keepenjoying the outdoors! But if you’re in a tick-prone area, take that extra minute to do a tick check. The most important thing is removing the tick properly (use fine-tipped tweezers, grab close to the skin, pull upward, no twisting, no Vaseline, no matches). Then watch for symptoms: fever, rash, fatigue, joint aches. If you find an attached tick and are in a high-risk area for Lyme disease, it’s worth calling your doctor if it was attached for more than 36 hours.
So, am I worried about ticks? Always. I live in tick heaven here in New England. But this means I am careful to wear proper repellents (DEET for skin and Permethrin for clothing for me; you do you here), and I also check carefully after being outside. Will this keep me from going outside? Certainly not. And I hope it won’t slow down your outdoorsy summer, either.
It has been just over a year since Dad died, and and now I’m the one dealing with multiple health diagnoses. The heart is on the mend, following surgery for a condition that I had no idea about until my doctor caught it while checking for bronchitis. I’m on a waitlist to see someone about the concerning lumps on my thyroid, discovered when I went for a pre-operative CT scan. I’m finally getting around to being tested for sleep apnea after the nurses in hospital asked whether I had it.
In all three cases, there were signs I should have been paying attention to, but ignored. Dad ignored or downplayed his symptoms until nothing could be done. I’m trying really hard (now) to break that pattern of behaviour.
I think of these things as mostly being lessons from Dad, but some come from Mom too. Was it a generational thing? Or just my family dynamics? Thankfully it doesn’t seem to have been passed on to my kids so hopefully they have learned the lessons already.
Listen to your body;
Consider that what you are telling yourself is normal for your body may actually just mean you are stubborn;
Admit when things hurt or feel wrong;
Ask for help;
If you can’t ask, at least accept help when it’s offered;
Read up on what is considered “normal” so at least you have some sort of baseline for assessing whether you should be worried, or feel free to carry on with whatever gives you joy.
A smiling woman wearing dark clothes rides a blue bicycle with an orange basket on the front. She has both her feet off the pedals, stretched forward. Having done this just last week, I am pretty sure she is saying “wheeeee!”
