It’s 7:59 p.m. and I need to get to the garbage bin at once. Curfew will be upon us in exactly one minute and I’m standing outside our front door, holding a garbage bag full of putrid fish bones (don’t ask).

But where IS the garbage bin? For some reason, it’s not in its usual spot on the driveway. I stare into the night, trying to locate its whereabouts.

Found it! Why is it still by the curb? Which family member was on bin duty today? It’s just so irresponsible of them! So neglectful and disrespectful and careless! I’ll give them a consequence for that!

Ah, never mind, I just remembered it was me.

The problem is, the bin is protruding onto the road, which, as you may very well know, is a public area where no one is allowed after 8 p.m.

Houston, we may have a problem (unless I somehow manage to make a run for it, get to the bin and yank it back onto our property in less than one minute). I must stop blabbering now. No time to waste.

I whoosh down the driveway towards the curb. The ground is icy though, and I find myself skidding into the road. Oh no, I’m on public terrain now, blatantly infringing on the law! I look around. There’s no soul in sight. I immediately notice that our bin is the only one still left by the curb (which goes to show that other families have their bin duties sorted).

Aagh! What was that sound? Someone’s approaching! Quick, hide! I leap behind the bin and duck down, still clutching the garbage bag. I mentally calculate how much of me is on our property and how much is in the public sphere. Better be flawless than lawless. My left foot is clearly on the road; the rest of me is on our territory. My left foot is breaking the law! I need to remedy that immediately. I lean sideways in an attempt to bring as much of me as possible onto our property, but, alas, I lose balance and roll to the road, winding up in a fetal position right in front of the bin. If a SWAT team ambushed me now, I’d have a hard time explaining this.

The sound is getting closer. Someone’s clearly spotted me. I shut my eyes tight and hold my breath. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.

I open one eye just a little and find myself face to face with a deer. He or she looks at me for a brief second and gallops elegantly away. I’m pretty sure it was sneering, as if to say, ‘Aren’t you envious of my freedom, you lowly human? Look! I’m allowed outside at night!’

I have no time to ponder this inequality, however. I’m back on my feet and am about to haul the bin onto the driveway when a screeching noise startles me. Is it a siren? Have I been spotted after all?

In a brisk move I dive behind the garbage bin once again, performing an unintentional front handspring and landing with a thud in a pile of snow. For a few seconds I’m not sure where I am. I clear the snow off my eyes and realize I’m inside a snowbank. I crawl out of the snowbank, a little shaky and unsettled. I peer carefully from behind the bin. Here comes that noise again.

Okay, phew, it’s just the train.

I’m soon back on my feet, wheeling the bin up the driveway. When I finally position it back in its spot, I heave a huge sigh of relief. Mission accomplished! All’s well that ends well. I inhale the fresh, crisp air.

But wait a minute. How come I’m inhaling fresh, crisp air and not putrid fish bones? Wasn’t I holding a garbage bag filled with fish bones a scant moment ago? Where’s the bag? I don’t remember ever discarding it in the bin.

I survey the surroundings. There it is, by the curb, protruding slightly into the road.

Houston, we have another problem.

Actually, no, forget it Houston.

I’ve never taken such a stressful trip to the bin before. I’m not going to the curb again during curfew. Sorry, no can do. Let the wildlife enjoy this freebie.

I just hope that this assembly of cats, feasting on fish bones by our curb, does not count as a ‘large gathering’. I dread to think that some cats may even consider this ‘a meal out at a restaurant’. I don’t think I can handle any more infractions tonight.

An Amazon delivery truck has just pulled into our driveway.

That’s odd. I haven’t ordered anything from Amazon recently.

“A delivery for Didi Gorman,” the delivery person hands me a large parcel as I open the door.

I look at the name and the address on the parcel. It’s my name and my address alright.

But seriously, a microfiber burgundy duvet cover set? I really didn’t order that. I don’t even like burgundy!

I have no time to ponder this enigma, however, because right at that moment I catch a glimpse of yet another Amazon truck pulling into our driveway. A much larger parcel emerges out of the back of the truck and, judging by how the delivery person strains to carry it, it’s quite heavy too.

“Are you Didi Gorman?” he huffs when he makes it to the door.

“Yeah…?” I say hesitantly.

“Here’s your convection toaster oven,” he lowers the parcel to the ground.

“My what?” I’m not sure I understood.

“Your convection toaster oven.”

I don’t even know what ‘convection’ means. But whatever it is, my name and address are on the label. I mumble a thank-you, shut the door, and drag the box into the living room.

I’m about to log into the Amazon website to look into this mystery when my seven-year-old invites me to play a game on his iPad. “Look, mommy, I’m gaming! Let’s play this cool game together! It’s a–”

“Not now, sweetie” I cut him off, “I need to sort something out first.”

Where was I? Ah, yes, logging into the Amazon website to look into this mystery.

Hang on. What’s that sound coming from outside? Is it not that of an Amazon truck driving up the street?

The vehicle materializes in our driveway and I watch in dread as the delivery person disappears behind the back of the truck and reappears hauling a cart, atop which a huge box is secured. It takes him a good few minutes to maneuver the heavy cargo on our icy driveway, but after considerable effort and much heaving, he manages to reach the front door.

“Are… you… Didi Gorman?” he pants as I open the door.

“Y-es?” I say faintly.

“Here’s… your... electric… snowblower,” he’s almost out of breath.

I mutter an unconvincing thank-you, shut the door, and go back into the house.

“Now can we play my new game on the iPad?” asks the seven-year-old when he sees me.

“Not yet. Mommy needs a drink,” I murmur and head to the kitchen, where I stay for a few minutes to regroup.

The knock on the door makes me jump and I nearly knock my drink over. My hands are trembling as I open the door to yet another Amazon delivery person.

“Are you Didi Gorman?”

“No,” I say. “Didi Gorman moved to Australia. Cancel the order!”

“Ha, ha, ha, nice sense of humor!” he chuckles. “Where would you like me to leave the indoor chicken coop, Mrs. Gorman?”

An indoor chicken coop? Is that even a thing? Don’t we need chickens for that?

“Just leave it by the convection toaster oven,” I motion feebly towards the middle of the living room.

He’s soon gone and I’m finally logging into Amazon, searching the ever-so-elusive Customer Service contact details. My seven-year-old spots me, peers at the screen, and calls out, “Mommy, why did you start gaming without me? The imaginary store is MY game!”

What is he talking about?

Uh-oh. I have a premonition. Did he just say he was playing an imaginary store?

I peek at his iPad. The Amazon website is on full display and my young buyer is tapping on various items with gusto. I’m transfixed as he clicks on an image of a red leather recliner. ‘Add to cart?’. Click. ‘Purchase now?’. Click. ‘Confirm order, Didi Gorman?’ Click.

And just like that, in the blink of an eye, I’ve become the proud owner of an unsolicited red leather recliner.

“See?” he says triumphantly, “I beat you to it! I bought a sofa in five seconds, and all you did was to stand here and stare!”

“W– what else did you buy in this imaginary store?” I ask when I finally find my voice.

“A wireless security camera, a treadmill, and a portable wood stove!” comes the jubilant answer. “And you didn’t buy a single thing! You’re so slow!” he adds for emphasis.

Oh, really?

In one swift click I disable the automatic sign-in function, a move that puts an abrupt end to the gleeful juvenile shopping spree. The youthful consumer is devastated. He loved Amazon profoundly, and I have a feeling it was mutual.

Now that this saga is over, you would think I’d cancel these orders. But on second thought, why cancel? They could come in handy, after all. The microfiber burgundy duvet cover set, for example, will cover the indoor chicken coop and the convection toaster oven and, if it’s large enough, possibly the treadmill and the portable wood stove that will soon accessorize my living room.

Besides, the burgundy will match perfectly with the new red leather recliner, which, one must admit, is the best purchase yet. I mean, I could sure use a red leather recliner right now, just to calm down.

As for the security camera: How else will I be able to tell if an unbidden Amazon delivery truck is pulling into my driveway?

Moral of our story?

Disable ‘automatic sign-in’.

Alternatively, you could be like me and quickly log into the Amazon website to add a bottle of stress-relief capsules to one of those orders that’s about to journey to your driveway. I’ll even switch off my new security camera for that, because the stress-relief capsules are what I need most right now!

** Author’s note: No seven-year-olds were used in the making of this story. All people mentioned in the text are purely imaginary. I don’t even have a seven-year-old. **

I’m having a bit of a situation here. My omelet is stuck to the bottom of the frying pan and won’t come out even when I prod it with a spatula. I try a little harder, then harder still, but to no avail.

After several minutes of futile attempts, I’m beginning to lose patience. What does one need to do to release an omelet from a pan? Come on omelet, you can do it, come out of the pan, do it for momma!

No. It’s not working.

Fine, then! I’ve been too gentle so far. Time to use force. I clasp the spatula mid-handle and pummel the insolent omelet from above, clobbering it again and again, until I’m almost out of breath. Suddenly, the spatula flies out of my hand, hits the wall, falls to the ground, and splits in half. I stare in disbelief. The omelet is still intact.

What do I do now? This was my only spatula. Where do I find another one now?

I consider popping to the store once I stop panting, but then I remember: Spatulas are considered ‘non-essential’ and are out of bounds until further notice. (Who made that rule, by the way? And why, in heaven’s name, did they decide that spatulas were non-essential? I secretly will their omelets to stick to their frying pans. That will teach them!)

Forget about going to the store.

Luckily, I have a plan B.

Plan B is a crowbar. A crowbar would pry the omelet free, wouldn’t it?

Oh, wait. I don’t really have a crowbar, nor can I purchase one, because the same authority who banned spatulas also banned crowbars. Forget plan B.

On to Plan C.

Plan C involves YOU. Yes, you. Do you have a spatula?

You do? How delightful! Count yourself among the privileged. You are in possession of a scarce and precious resource.

In that case, I’ve prepared a little speech, especially for you: Dear spatula owner, I’m appealing to your sense of civic duty today. Hog not your spatula! Call not dibs on it! Find it in your heart to rise to the occasion and sacrifice your spatula for the greater common good. Relinquish your spatula for the benefit of a downtrodden fellow citizen, such as the author of this humble soliloquy, for whom, flipping a fried egg at breakfast is a mere dream. I implore thee! I beseech thee! Come forward and bestow thy spatula on me!

Why are you shaking your head like that? Aren’t you moved by my supplication?

Ah, okay, I’ll change tack.

Look, I’ll offer you a deal. We’ll go into a partnership, you and I. You’ll rent out your spatula to me, and I’ll act as a brokerage between you and the many folks out there who, thanks to the ban on non-essentials, are stuck with omelets that won’t come out of the frying pan. You have to admit, there’s a fantastic business opportunity here. An entire demographic is in dire need of your spatula, and you have the solution to their problem! Isn’t the principle of supply-and-demand a thing of beauty? And isn’t the ban on non-essentials, which created this demand in the first place, simply brilliant?

The spatula black-market has never been riper than at this very moment. Let’s seize this opportunity and make a killing! Imagine the moolah! The power! The Fame! And all this thanks to your spatula.

Is this a deal?

Yes? Great! Thanks to your spatula, operation Unstick Our Omelets is underway.

Also thanks to your spatula, the two slogans ‘We’re All In This Together’ and ‘Everything Will Be All Right’, can finally become a reality.

There’s a great reason for celebration today and I propose a toast for the true hero who saved the day.

Here’s to essential kitchenware!

Long live your spatula!

And so begins another day of remote-learning at our place.

Child #1 is sitting on her bed, typing answers to a math quiz on the tablet.

She’s always been good at math, I muse as I walk across the living room. She can do additions, subtractions, divisions, multiplica–

CLACK!!!! BLAM!!!

What was THAT??? That scared me! My foot just hit an object on the floor and, whatever it was, it’s now flying across the room, landing in the hallway.

Hey, it’s the iPad! What was the iPad doing on the floor?

I look down. Child #2 is performing the floor bow yoga pose on the carpet, following instructions still coming out of the now-distant iPad. I apologize hastily, fetch the rogue device and reposition it on the carpet right beside child #2’s face. I don’t want to interrupt the yoga class.

When another set of instructions comes from the iPad, child #2 – still sprawled on the carpet – thrusts his arms in all directions.

I narrowly escape the erratic punches and seek safety in the kitchen, where child #3 is attending a visual arts tutorial.

The laptop is open on the table and I hear the teacher demonstrating acrylics-mixing techniques.

Is it my imagination or is my young Picasso mixing the paints in the fancy China teacups?

No, it isn’t my imagination; it definitely isn’t my imagination.

“Come look, mommy! Look at all the paints on my paint palette!” child #3 calls out, wiping her hands on a white silk tablecloth that she’s using as a rag (how in heaven’s name did she manage to find it? I thought I hid it in the cupboard), and lifting some kind of a shiny tray to show me.

Good gracious, please tell me it’s not the silver tray that used to belong to my great-great-grandma.

I stare at the tray in horror. It’s covered with various splotches of unrecognizable mixed paint.

Child #3 looks at me expectantly.

“Oh, wow…” I manage at last. “That’s uh… so, uh… so… creative!”

Never mind, I tell myself. What’s done is done. We weren’t using the silver tray anyway. Or the white silk tablecloth. Or the fancy China teacups.

I think I’m developing a small migraine. I need some fresh air. I’ll go for a walk and figure out how to break it to mom that the silver tray that has been passed down in the family from generation to generation for over two hundred years, has been sacrificed on the altar of young art.

As I approach the walk-in closet to grab my coat, I hear a muffled discussion coming from inside – something about the solar system and Mars’s gravity. Ah, yes, that must be child #4’s astrophysics lesson. The walk-in closet sure is a cozy, if somewhat compact, learning space.

I eavesdrop for a couple of minutes and learn about Planet Pluto’s recent fall from grace. Poor Pluto had been demoted from a ‘real planet’ to a ‘dwarf star’. Ouch.

I’m about to knock on the closet’s door to tell child #4 that I need my coat when a realization hits me.

I don’t have four children! I only have three!

Who is it in the walk-in closet, then?

I swing the door open.

The neighbors’ undergraduate son, Dylan, is in there, sitting on a small pile of jackets, holding a cellphone, and talking into a wireless headset earpiece. He notices me and waves hello.

“Hi Dylan,” I whisper, “Why are you in my closet?”

Turns out, he came knocking on our front door earlier, searching for a quiet corner to study. (He couldn’t concentrate at his place now that his sister is training to become a trombone player.) Knowing our front door was often unlocked, he allowed himself in and went straight into the walk-in closet, where he found all the calm and peace he needed – until I barged in.

Ah, okay then. I apologize for the disruption and gently pull the closet’s door shut. If the path to academic brilliance must go through my walk-in closet, so be it.

I just hope he doesn’t tell all his friends about the safe haven that is my closet or I may never be able to retrieve my coat again.

So, there. Just another day of remote-learning at our place, with very minor inconveniences. 

It’s the children’s league hockey practice today.

I accompany my 11-year-old son to the changing room and help him attach his helmet and tie on his skates. Then I head to the arena to find a good spot at the sidelines.

The young players should be skating into the arena at any minute. Oh, there he is! Wearing a black helmet with a large yellow sticker bearing his name, and holding a hockey stick with a matching yellow sticker wrapped around its middle (this is how I can tell him apart from all the other kids).

I wave at him and blow a kiss in his direction.

Aww. I’m misting up a bit, to tell you the truth. The poor thing sprained an ankle earlier this morning but wouldn’t miss hockey practice for anything in the world. It’s for this reason that I holler various encouragements whenever he’s skating by: “Good job!” “You can do it!” “Smart move!”

And you’d think the pain in his ankle would slow him down, wouldn’t you? Imagine my surprise, then, when he seizes the puck and charges towards the other side of the arena, swift and agile like an arrow. Wow. I didn’t realize hockey had such healing powers.

“Go! Go! Go!” I yell as he zooms past.

He dashes right past several other players, dodges the goalie, lifts up his stick and smacks the puck.

This is real. This is happening. He’s doing it. I hold my breath.

GOAAAAAL!!!!

Yes! Ohmygosh! Ohmygosh! He did it!

I’m so proud of him I can barely contain it! I storm into the rink, tumbling twice, but I don’t care.

I make it through to him and clasp him by the helmet. I smooch the top of his helmet right on the yellow sticker, and I peer into the visor to tell him how proud I am of him. His big brown eyes meet mine.

Wait a minute.

Did I just say ‘his big BROWN eyes’?

That can’t be right. As far as I know, my son’s eyes are blue!

I look into the visor again. I’ve never seen these eyes before. I look at the helmet. It sure is the right helmet with my son’s name on the yellow sticker. The hockey stick is the right one too, but I have no clue who this child is.

What’s going on? And why is my real son now standing in the bleachers, rolling his aforementioned blue eyes at me?

I let go of the horror-stricken brown-eyed child and rush back to the bleachers.

Turns out, the pain in my son’s ankle worsened right after I left the changing room and he decided not to play after all. He then gave his helmet and his stick to another child who had just come today for a tryout.

Ah, well!

And so it came to be that a promising, brown-eyed, young hockey star’s future career was nipped in the bud just like that. The trauma of random mommas seizing his head and slurping his helmet has put him off professional sports forever.

Who could blame him?

I’ve been writing a humor column for over a year now and if there’s one thing I’ve learned in the process, it’s that humor writing is much more complex than meets the eye.

Let me take you behind the scenes.

First, what is a humor piece?
A humor piece is a short, witty, comical text published in a newspaper column (or on the web), with or without the goal of making the reader reflect on a certain subject.

A special type of humor
The humor I use in my pieces is based on the principles of parody (exaggerating things until they become absurd). The text, therefore, should not be read at face value. I write these pieces as farces, not as accurate representations of reality. On the part of the reader, this requires a fair dose of suspended disbelief.

Straddling the line between reality and fiction
Though usually sparked by something that happened in real life, my humor pieces are mostly imaginary.

That said, since the stories do contain a grain of truth, the line between reality and fiction is somewhat blurred, just enough for the reader to wonder whether some of it really happened – which is part of the fun of reading a humor piece (and certainly of writing it.) In A tomato soup like no other, for example, the preparation of the soup was real; the blowing up of the kitchen in the process, was not.

Similarly, and while we’re at it, I’ll confess the following:

I did NOT join the wrong family on zoom (The Zoom Call). This piece was inspired by a real family zoom call, where I did not recognize one of the participants (who turned out to be a cousin’s friend.) (COVID series)

Nor did I start a green onion therapy (My Green Onion Therapy). I do grow an onion on the windowsill but I use it for salads, not for therapy.

I don’t support totalitarian regimes (Say What?). In this piece, I just goofed about the funny misunderstandings caused by talking through a facemask. (COVID series)

No one ever proposed to me in the grocery store (Who’s that behind the Mask?). I was just having fun with the idea of wrong identities – again, a farce about mask-wearing. (COVID series)

So there, the creative license at work.

Are the characters real or made-up?
As a general rule, I don’t include real people in my writing unless I have specific permission from them. Most of the characters in my pieces are, therefore, the fruit of my imagination, even if some of them have originally been inspired by real people (in which case the character will be heavily edited, to conceal any resemblance to the individual who inspired it). I prefer to make up a character than to risk offending someone.

Even the first-person narrator is not entirely me but rather a persona that I assume for the sake of the story. The Didi in the stories does all sorts of ridiculous things that I’ve never done in real life: She dyes her aunt’s hair with green tea (The Hair Dye), she organizes a horrible surprise party that ends up in the hospitalization of her colleague (The Surprise Party), she starts a duel in the grocery store (Wrong-Way Aisle); she’s a caricature. The real me pales in comparison, not to mention that in real life I’m quite introverted.

More to it than meets the eye
Humor is often a means rather than a goal unto itself, aiming to wink at the reader with a subtle message that needs to be read between the lines (such as social commentary on current affairs), rather than to make the reader roar with uncontrollable laughter.

All my COVID-related pieces are, in fact, satires that contain some kind of a deeper reflection on the current situation.

I wrote Tales of our Times: The Sneeze of Doom as a cautionary tale. What sparked my imagination was the recent involvement of the police forces in the enforcement of COVID regulations. I just thought to myself, what if we started criminalizing coughing in public? How far are we from a dystopia where folks tattletale on one another for sneezing in a store?

Similarly, Tales of our Times: A Radical Safety Measure (where I propose to ban the letter ‘D’ due to its virus-spreading potential) is a farce about rushed solutions.

Length
The pieces are never longer than a few hundred words. This is not necessarily due to limited space in the newspaper (non-issue on the internet) but also because parody, to be impactful, needs to deliver the message poignantly – short and to the point – rather than to wear the humor thin over a lengthy stretch of text.

Literary tropes & formulas
My pieces incorporate various short-parody tropes, and follow a certain formula, common in this literary genre: a quirky narrator, a concise, fast-paced story, a sequence of ludicrous events (often akin to a comedy of errors), a pivotal moment where the stakes are the highest, and an element of surprise towards the end.

There are several possible variants to this formula:

Variant A: The narrator leads the reader to assume something that turns out to be wrong.
The Surprise Party, The Snow Storm, Gone too Soon

Variant B: The whimsical narrator sets about to do something, only to reach a silly conclusion at the end.
Time Management, The Sleepover, Drenched in North Hatley

Variant C: The narrator wittily winks at the reader. In this variant, unlike the previous two, the narrator is clever, rather than clumsy. 
Fifty Shades of Pink, I’m Going Viral on Social Media!, What’s that Word Again?, Mission Impossible: Don’t Touch your Face

How does it work, then, from the original idea to the final piece?

Humor-writing, 101:
a) Original trigger: something in real life attracts my attention.

b) Brainstorming: I toy with the idea in my imagination, pushing the boundaries of the prospective plot, asking myself all sorts of what-ifs (what if I exaggerate even more, what if I add another sub-character, what if I place the story in the countryside instead of in the city, what if I make a character male instead of female, etc). I write all my ideas down, unedited, including the most outlandish and improbable.

c) Editing: this stage, by far, is the longest. This is where I narrow the story down, re-organize it for consistency, edit out any element that doesn’t fit or that might be offensive, embellish the plot twist (the grand finale) to make it as gripping as I can, and voilà, a humor piece has just been born!

Not so simple
But wait. It’s quite common that I start writing a piece with one idea in mind but as the writing progresses, I change course.

My original idea for A tomato soup like no other, for example, was to write some kind of a cooking contest between me and another cook (possibly a family member) that goes horribly wrong. But as I progressed in the writing, the humor just didn’t come together. It had two focal points –the contest and the kitchen shenanigans– which only diluted its impact. In the end, I edited out the contest part in favor of the shenanigans. I did leave a hint at some kind of competition at the beginning of the piece where I mention a phone call from my cooking expert mom as the trigger for my sudden interest in soups. So I didn’t leave the contest element out completely; and I’m happy with this compromise.

Want to read more?
I post all my pieces on the Wise Choice Market blog. The link will take you to the blog’s main page where you can scroll down and read as many of them as you like.

I hope you enjoyed our tour behind the scenes.

Happy reading,
Didi, Wise Choice Market’s blog writer

Fellow book geeks, are you thinking what I’m thinking? That with yet another COVID lockdown and dreary weather looming over us this holiday season, what we need right now are a few light, cute, entertaining reads to counter all this gloom?

I have two such feel-good novels to recommend today: Confessions of a Domestic Failure by Bunmi Laditan (2017) and I Owe You One by Sophie Kinsella (2019). Both did a good job in putting a smile on my face.

I’d like to start my review with the many similarities between the two.

First off, both novels are high pacing contemporary comedies, written in the first person and narrated by a young-ish, mildly-obsessive woman who, through a series of shenanigans and wacky adventures, eventually comes into her own.

The humor in both books is witty and delightful and is based on the principles of parody (exaggerating things until they become absurd). As such, the reader shouldn’t read these novels as accurate representations of reality, but rather as sitcoms. (In other words, allow a large dose of suspended disbelief and don’t take these stories too seriously.) Similarly, don’t think of the characters as real people. They’re not. They are parodies. Enjoy the author’s clever and amusing writing for what it is – clever and amusing, and let go of the need for one hundred percent realism.

I’m giving you these heads ups so that you can really enjoy the reading. I saw quite a few book reviews criticizing these novels for using many stereotypes and predictable formulas. True, these are definitely present, but if you go into the reading expecting parody rather than a documentary, you’ll not only maximize the fun but also understand that the role of those one-dimensional characters is mostly to sharply contrast with the narrator, thus raising the stakes and driving the plot forward.

There. I’m done my little speech. Now let’s start.

Confessions of a Domestic Failure by Bunmi Laditan
This novel is written like a blog.

Synopsis: Ashley Keller is a hot mess of a new mother. Formerly a career girl and now a stay-at-home mom, she is overwhelmed by the unending demands of domestic life and full-time motherhood, and by her sense of inadequacy in it all. She’s desperate to become a capable mom, but her sense of failure is only exacerbated by the constant stream of perfect motherhood images she sees on social media and to which she inevitably compares herself. Exhausted and struggling, she signs up for a Motherhood boot camp led by a celebrity motherhood guru, hoping to become a better mother. In the process, she learns a few lessons about appearances versus reality and about what good motherhood really means.

Reading this book definitely took me back to when I was a first-time mom. I recognized those piles of laundry, the sleep deprivation, the mess around the house, the comparison to other moms whom I perceived – wrongly – as more capable than me. I’ve been through it all and the novel did a good job presenting these themes in a relatable and humorous way. As a humor writer myself, I love it when the author – through the narrator – winks at the reader.

I did find the lead-up to the ending a bit too long. The points the novel was trying to make (the tensions in married life following the advent of a new baby, the exhaustion, the lack of routine, the sense of not being understood, the keeping up of appearances, the decline in social life), had already been explored in different permutations throughout the story, there was no need to repeat them.

All in all, I had a good time reading Confessions of a Domestic Failure.

I Owe You One by Sophie Kinsella
I’m about one third into the book and, so far, it’s a classic Sophie Kinsella treat. The narrator, called Fixie (because she’s obsessed with fixing things), tries to get back with her ex-boyfriend who is broke and desperately looking for a new job. As luck would have it, and through a typical Sophie Kinsella sequence of whimsical circumstances, she manages to secure him a job interview in an investment firm.

This is where I got so far in my reading and I’m curious as to which quirky events lie ahead. If I get it correctly, things are about to change drastically. I mean, there are still some 300 pages to go, so something is about to go wrong or take an unexpected turn.

Similarly to Confessions of a Domestic Failure, this novel (written in the form of a rom-com) requires a larger dose of suspended disbelief on the part of the reader. Characters are fairly clichéd (the impossibly beautiful and empty-headed sister, the conniving brother, the patronizing uncle, the phony ex-boyfriend), including the likeable, if quite gullible, narrator.

This is the place to emphasize my earlier point: I didn’t approach the characters as real people, but rather as fictional caricatures. It’s in this fashion that I managed not to find them all that irritating.

So there, my fellow bookish friends, my two novels and my reading insights.

I’m planning on popping to the local library today to stash a few more books and I will post about them soon.

I will take this opportunity to wish you a happy holiday season and keep reading!

Didi, Wise Choice Market, December 2020

Folks, I’ve been thinking about it long and hard recently and I think I’ve found one of the main culprits in the spread of this never-ending virus.

It’s the letter D.

That’s right. Think about it for a second. ‘D’ is a sputtery sound and, given what we know about virus transmission through speech, we should really stop using it.

I therefore call for an immediate ban on the letter D!

Fellow citizens, allow me to propose a safer option: the letter N.

Under my new legislation, all Ds will be replaced with Ns.

I can feel you’re not convinced, though. Perhaps you need a little nudge to snap you out of your hesitation. No problem. Let’s conduct a quick experiment. We’ll test the two letters in real time. Before we start, position yourself at a safe distance from anyone else. We don’t want to turn this into a super spreader event.

Ready?

Put the palm of your hand close to your mouth and say ‘da, da, da, da’ WITHOUT SPITTLING. Not so easy now, is it? Repeat the experiment with ‘na, na, na, na’. Much better, eh? There you go. I rest my case. From now on, therefore, instead of saying, “Didi, your idea is absurd,” say, “Nini, your inea is absurn.” Instead of asking, “Which day is it today? Saturday or Tuesday?” ask, “Which nay is it tonay? Saturnay or Tuesnay?”

Good. We’re getting better at it.

The question remains, though, how do we deal with those folks who, even after our experiment, still insist on pronouncing the ‘letter-which-shall-not-be-named’? Do we send the police after them? Do we bring in the armed forces?

I’ll respond to that with a D-free answer: “This is a real nilemma but I have no noubt we’ll come up with a speeny solution.”

Anyway.

I’d like to take this opportunity to address several members of my family who, unfortunately, bear the fourth letter of the alphabet in their names. Cousins Debby, Derek, and David: Starting today, you shall be renamed Cousins Nebby, Nerek, and Navin. I know you’ll be making a sacrifice but you’ll be doing it for the greater common good. (As a side note, according to our new language law, the last four words should read ‘the greater common goon’, but never mind.)

So, there. My proposal in a nutshell.

Oh, sorry. How could I have forgotten?

My dearest, dearest daddy: I hope you’re okay becoming my ‘nearest, nearest nanny’?

Ahhh-tchooo!

The moment I sneezed I knew I was toast. Hundreds of droplets spritzed out of me, spraying my shopping cart, drizzling on the canned goods aisle, and sprinkling the only other customer who happened to be walking by the tuna shelf at that unfortunate moment.

Uh-oh.

He stopped in his tracks, eyes wide with horror. Then he narrowed his eyes, shot me a dirty look and snatched his cellphone out of his pocket.

Covering his mouth with the palm of his hand, he whispered into the phone, “Oh Hi, I would like to report a sneezer.”

Dang. The sneeze police would be here any moment. I’d better make a run for it.

I charged towards the exit but I was too late. A screeching sound came from a loudspeaker: ‘Alert! Alert! Alert! A sneezer on the loose! A sneezer on the loose!’

Two officers now burst into the store, fully armed, and headed in my direction. “Ma’am, you’re under arrest,” one of them announced. “You have committed the felony of sneezing in public. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you exhale – coughs, wheezes, sighs, and sniffles – will be used against you in the court of respiratory crimes.”

He was about to handcuff me when I gasped sharply. Upon this, he jumped back. “Back up everybody! Back up everybody! She’s spewing more droplets!” he yelled to a small circle of customers that had formed around the scene.

I was brought before a judge that same day. “Ma’am, you are charged with illegal use of a biological weapon against innocent civilian targets,” the judge said solemnly. “However, as a first-time offender, the court is willing to show clemency, and replace your prison sentence with a fine. A dollar for every droplet you have discharged. In addition, you will be sent to rehab, where you will learn to control the urge to sneeze.”

With that, the gavel was banged, and that was that.

I was ecstatic. A dollar for every droplet? That should amount to no more than twenty-thousand bucks, which, believe you me, is a very small price to pay compared to what would have awaited me behind bars. (Everybody knew what other respiratory convicts, such as coughers and throat-clearers, did to sneezers. They would blatantly hack in your face all day! I’m shuddering at the thought. )

I breathed a humongous sigh of relief. So humongous in fact, that it sounded more like a roar, to be perfectly honest.

And that’s how I wound up with ten years in the dungeon, no chance of parole…

Are you looking for a steamy, flavorful, tomato soup recipe that will wow your family and have everyone’s taste buds begging for more?

You’ll have to look elsewhere, in that case. You won’t find it in this article.

For some reason, my soup came out inedible.

Worse. It nearly blew up the kitchen… and sent an entire family running to the bathroom, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

It all started when mom called me the other week, gushing about this heavenly Italian tomato soup she had just made and which turned out so scrumptious and mouthwatering, that she was seriously considering opening her own restaurant.

After such an intro, I instantaneously decided to emulate the recipe.

Which I did, to the letter: I sliced tomatoes, minced garlic, and chopped onion and dill. I then added a tin of tomato paste to the pot and stirred. I covered everything in water, sprinkled salt and pepper, stirred again, covered with a lid and simmered.

But two things happened when I served the soup to the family:
1) One by one, folks excused themselves from the table and rushed to the washroom. I had never seen such a queue in the hallway, and we’re only five of us!
2) A series of mysterious explosions was coming from the kitchen.

I ducked under the dining table, waiting for the blasts to subside.

A couple of minutes later, I came out of my hiding spot and cautiously approached the pot. Something was still quivering inside it.

Spooky.

I carefully removed the lid and looked inside. The concoction was unrecognizable.

Now, let me ask you: How come the same recipe has yielded two such strikingly opposite results – mom will be opening a gourmet restaurant, while I’ll be calling the insurance? I mean, I followed the recipe to the letter! To the letter, I’m telling you, to the letter!

Hang on a sec. I just realized something. When it said in the recipe ‘add a tin of tomato paste to the soup and stir,’ was I supposed to open the tin?

Anybody?