Once upon a time, I was on trend and watched something on Netflix when everyone else was watching it.

I’d heard about The Social Dilemma before it premiered, of course. Everyone I knew was talking about it: my colleagues, my family, my friends.

And, given my general reluctance towards, and resentment of, social media, I knew that when I watched it, I would be simultaneously terrified and angered.

So I made sure to have two of my favourite forms of self-care nearby: a glass of red wine, and a plate of Miss Vickie’s Original Recipe potato chips.

You can imagine…

I spent the majority of my pregnancy hoping that my child would be born exactly on time.

I suspect that many expecting parents feel this way, for any number of reasons.

I, however, only had one: I wanted my child to be an Aquarius, not a Capricorn, because this Gemini has always gotten along better with Aquarians than with Caps.

(No offence to any Goats reading this, of course… I’m sure you’re all wonderful people.)

My son actually came a week early, so he’s a Capricorn through and through.

But it’s okay.

Truly.

Despite what I just wrote above, I’m…

If you have children in your life — because you’re a parent, or close friend of the parent(s), or guardian, or an aunt / uncle, or grandparents — then you know they can be really, really expensive.

I gained this knowlege approximately 31 months and 3 weeks ago. I wouldn’t say that, since then, I’ve become used to the expense of raising a child, exactly, but I’m certainly much more aware of the cost of things.

Like food, for example, because my child eats. A. Lot. …

You’ve likely seen – or read about – this trope thousands of times before. It’s incredibly common, especially in romance stories:

The female protagonist is very intelligent. How do we know this? Because she’s wearing glasses, obvs!

Then, at some point, she meets The One: a boy – or a man, or some combination thereof – who sends her into a tizzy.

For his part, he doesn’t even know she exists until she removes her glasses and, lo and behold, she’s actually super-hot.

You just couldn’t see it before because her glasses projected a beauty-obscuring force-field, or something.

I’ve heard…

Last week, I finished reading “An Extraordinary Union”, by Alyssa Cole. She is one of my could-shit-on-paper-and-I-would-still-read-it authors: her books are so, so smart, and her characters (especially the female ones) are so, so savvy, that I want to be them when I grow up.

I have made it a point to read everything Ms. Cole has written as soon as I could get my hands on it. But not “An Extraordinary Union”.

I resisted for a long time because…

Reading About Slavery – Even in Fiction – is Hard

I knew that reading “An Extraordinary Union” would be triggering. Set during the American Civil War, it’s the story of…

#1: I’ve never read the book.

That’s not quite true. I actually started reading it last year, but put it down after the first few chapters because I just couldn’t get into it.

Still, I sort of feel that I have read it, in a way, because I’ve come across so many other versions of the story:

• in Katie Oliver’s “Prada and Prejudice” (set in 21st-century England, and categorically awful);
• in Sonali Dev’s “Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavours” (set in 21st-century USA, with an interesting gender reversal, in that the Mr. Darcy character is female);
• in Curtis Sittenfeld’s, “Eligible” (also…