Observables #28

on women playing Wordle and the joy of the Great Canadian Baking Show

Writer Mary Fairhurst Breen, who focuses on queer feminist tragicomedy, personal essays and children's literature is my wonderful guest today and she has jumped on board my new segment!

Like millions of people worldwide, all I want to do, all day long, is play Wordle. If I had my druthers, I would play Scrabble full-time. I would like that to be a career option. My dream is to one day play against Roxane Gay, who is a competetive Scrabble champion. (see photo)

One of my favourite shows ever (Crave) is Work in Progress, now in its second season. I’m trying to savour it, but it’s easy to let the half hour episodes flow one after another. It’s written by Abby McEnany, who stars as a middle-aged lesbian with depression and OCD. She comes out of the Chicago improv scene. Because the show is largely autobiographical, it feels very authentic. That’s an overused word, but it applies here. Like life, the show is an unpredictable tragicomedy.

Back in the before times, the Baroness von Sketch troupe had a prophetic sketch in which a psychiatrist prescribes baking shows to all her patients. As she explains, they are more soothing and cheaper than many other forms of therapy. I’ve been gorging on baking shows all through the pandemic. The Great Canadian Baking Show is my hands-down favourite, because it is relentlessly cheery and gentle. The lovely Canadians are encouraging each other.  Just hearing French judge Bruno Fedeisen pronounce “butter” (several times per episode) is almost as good as eating a sensuously butter pastry. Which I also recommend. 

In the fall, I spent time working at a bookstore, and now I work part-time at a library. I have observed two pandemic trends: difficult reads that perhaps release all the pent up feels, and escapist reads that involve murder, for reasons I’ve never fully understood (mysteries are not my thing). I find I can’t handle brutal trauma, nor can I tolerate fluff, so I have to find a middle ground. If I can meet engaging characters, I can handle a certain level of pain and heartache. I loved The Overstory by Richard Powers for all the people and all the trees. It took me the month of December to finish because it was too heavy to carry around and read on the TTC, but well worth the investment of time.

Two Nigerian-Canadian women are rocking the CanLit scene right now: Cheluchi Onyemelukwe-Onuobia (The Son of the House) and Francesca Ekwuyasi (Honey Butter Pig Bread). Like the brilliant Nigerian-American writer, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, they are feminists bringing powerful analysis to engaging fiction. I loved both of these books.

What I am always wearing is a style I call menopause camouflage. I had wicked hot flashes during menopause. The last one started in 2014 and I’m still waiting for it to end. My microclimate is easily 10 degrees hotter than the actual indoor or outdoor temperature, so I’m always trying to wear as little as I can get away with. This means cotton or linen short sleeve dresses and tunics year round. In winter, I choose dark colours and put leggings underneath to create the illusion of seasonal appropriateness. But I’m still visibly sweating while all around me are layering on the wooly cardigans. To paraphrase the marvelous Mary Walsh, my thermostat is permanently stuck up on “cremate.”

Mary Fairhurst Breen is a late blooming local writer whose memoir, Any Kind of Luck at All, and picture book, Awesome Andie's Best of the Block, were both published in the fall of 2021. She is currently writing a nonfiction book about queer activism for middle grade readers. Find out more here.

Episode 21 of Sister On! drops tomorrow. All about our shadow sides. Also, have you subscribed to our newsletter? We send you one of Natalie’s recipes every week!