This is Your Life!

Ordinarily at this time of year, many of you may be looking forward to getting away; a place where you have a side of beach with your morning coffee, happier than a seagull with a French fry. A time best described where “you lie down in the sun with wine and a book, getting up five to seven days later”.

But if that isn’t on the market for you right now, I would like to offer you another sort of journey: one of self-congratulations and self-recognition, honouring your life as a REAL ESTATE AGENT: essentially a therapist, confessor, business advisor and risk accessor to all the citizen pilgrims that cross your threshold.

Recognizing, and in gratitude for your endless days and nights, here is a sort of career biography citing common and illustrious day-to-day events, encapsulating the trials and tribulations in the life of a real estate agent, but really, I’m just answering the age old question – “What do real estate agents do all day anyway?”

Just as there are a myriad of glories to this career, there are inevitably occasions which, with a sigh, you fondly say, “It’s all in a days work”.


Number One: Forgetting to bring a chair to your vacant “Open House” as well as a bag of Miss Vickie’s Sweet Chili chips. But on the bright side, this does give you that much needed alone time – to read “100 Places To Visit Before You Die”, drinking cold coffee out of a paper cup and…listening to the chirping smoke detector.

Number Two: Selling a property where:

there is a large Manet poster over the bed. You know, the one with a naked girl on the bed. It’s famous.
the “home office” is really a folding table strewn with papers and an outdated desktop computer.
the house is either in need of a good carpenter or a well-placed bolt of lightning.
the main bedroom looks like a furniture showroom.
the housekeeping style could be best described as – “there appears to have been a struggle”.
the neighbour’s front lawn looks like there’s a yard sale.

Really, to use theological terms, it is just too frigging much. 

Number Three: Sending emails with timestamps that make people ask, “when is it you sleep exactly?”
Number Four: Finding your socks don’t match when you take off your shoes.

Number Five: How to respond when your seller tells you their house is:
“cozy”, which really means tiny
“prewar”, which really means unrenovated
“converted” meaning they installed a fake wall to make an extra bedroom
“recently renovated” meaning the house had gone from uninhabitable to unpleasant

Number Six: Lowering the radio music when looking for the street address so you can see better.

Number Seven: Entering the lockbox code on your microwave after a long day. And even worse, when you thought you were buying organic vegetables, you got home only to discover they’re just regular donuts.
 

Number Eight: The homeowner:wants you to include every little detail about their house in the listing description.insists on you photographing the sides of their house.says their house was made with their bare hands out of reclaimed wood.
Number Nine: Hearing yet again, “Yes, I know what all the comps say, but my house is “SPECIAL”,(but in reality, it’s as ordinary as a loaf of bread.)

Number Ten: Endeavor not to be irritated by people, even when there is good reason to be.

Number Eleven: Wondering what kind of wine goes with oatmeal.

Number Twelve: Giving a great big thank you to weekends and evenings for understanding that there is no time for them now that you’re in real estate.

Number Thirteen: Thanking your car for being:
an office
filing cabinet
storage unit and
occasional dining room, boardroom, and bedroom.

Oh well, sunsets are probably overrated.
 

And just like that: time and gravity

For a long time, I thought I might avoid growing old altogether, but as they say, it’s better than the alternative. I mean, I had outfoxed opening ordinary packaging and could comprehend an excel sheet. But I still don’t understand why they have to keep inventing new ways to turn a shower on and off.
 
I am at the time of losses, what Jung called, “the afternoon of one’s life”; a marked and steady erosion of ambition, a kind of cliff edge. I have to accept I am not going to change the world after all, and will easily be forgotten. This knowledge is sobering, but also a sort of relief. It’s certainly changed my approach to filing taxes.
 
All that I have built up is now diminishing, disintegrating, disappearing; more doors closing than opening. Running out of time and not being able to leap out of taxis like a deer is something that never occurs to you when you are in your twenties or thirties, even in your forties. Now it looms ever closer. In other words, I still may have time for a second act, but I’d better get moving. Breaker Morant said that we have the responsibility of living every day like it might be our last, because one of these days we’re guaranteed to be right. I’m glad I’m still drinking, for this should help immensely.
 
So, what have I learned about getting older? Not a lot. But I thought I’d better write it down before I forget.
 

One of aging’s unnerving surprises hard to reconcile, is that everything is declining: health, firm thighs, a gimlet social life, and the certainty that you have something to impart, if only you could remember what that is. Once past the physical peek, of say, 26, it is an incremental dive downhill from there; the most prolonged of all disagreeable experiences. Nothing can keep you young – except maybe great sex. Hey, maybe even mediocre sex can add a few years.  

But wait, hasn’t there been some mistake? I was 19 a minute ago, but when I look over the paperwork, I see that I really was born quite a few years ago. 
 
Although I’m gratefully on the other side of something, I actually feel 35. Okay, 45. It’s the age I identify with, feeling like a young woman with something really wrong with me. it’s a weird hybrid of the me I once knew, my personal brand of delusion. There is, of course, a chance that I may be happier at eighty than I was at twenty or forty, but I’m probably also going to feel far less pleasant than I would like to. Essentially, it’s a messy business. 
 
Dylan Thomas’ “Do not go gentle into that good night.”, encouraged us to fight off aging, but he died when he was only 39, so he never knew how inflexible your knees could be in your 50’s.

You can call it experience, but I am under no such illusion. It’s really a matter of adjustment; to embrace the perceptible sense of deflation, my skin draping like a grubby old net curtain, the pair of wrinkles carving arches over my eyebrows resembling an anthropomorphized cat. And my chin, which can only be described as a kind of smudge. The only good grace about this, is my inability to be able to actually see it. And hair – it’s showing up in the strangest places.
 

The adage, “beauty comes from within”? I can’t stand people who say things like this. What can they be thinking? Don’t they have necks? And by the way, wrapping a scarf around it is not advised, as the imagination usually conjures up something worse than the reality.
 
I often hear people complain about how they look, people I’ve known for 25 years. To them I say, “What are you complaining about? You never looked that good to begin with.”

Our society has been youth obsessed for as long as I can remember, transcending the centuries. Example. In 1513, explorer Juan Ponce de León discovered Florida while searching for the fountain of youth and eternal life. I also read that people have tried staring deeply into their fireplace until a younger version of themselves appeared in the flames, but I can’t confirm the results. And no, you can’t ward off death or prolong beauty by only eating raw meat, roasted cauliflower and the stem of a rare tree.

Although now a mere technicality, a loophole, it might have been helpful if I hadn’t followed the skin care rules of the ‘60’s – baby oil and tinfoil, having no idea, among other things, that moisturizers were a part of wellness. Like Mickey Mantle (or maybe Mae West or George Burns) quipped, “If I’d known I was going to live this long, I would have taken better care of myself.”

By the way, men have a distinct advantage when it comes to aging, because their skin is 20 to 30 percent thicker than women’s. This just gets more and more agonizing.

I had a shock a couple of months ago when I was shopping for watercolours. I soon became aware of a stooped lady following me around the mall. Then I realized there were mirrors everywhere, even in the elevator. Let me tell you, you don’t bounce back from that overnight. 
 
 
I guess by growing older, this also means you should have the social acuity to “act your age,” like wearing age-appropriate clothes (apparently leggings and a matching leopard-print top have an expiration date), drinking age-appropriate drinks, and doing age-appropriate activities, but maybe doing one or two surprisingly young-like things (rollerblading, maybe, or being expelled- for “illicit drinking”) so that doesn’t seem like you’re trying too hard to let people know you’re still in the game. Most of this, though, just simply makes me tired. I mean, what’s the point?

But honestly, I never particularly had a desire to keep up, or even frankly, to sit up, having an inherently joint purpose with my bed. First, I have been around for so long that I’m re-reading the classics. Secondly, however arduous to admit, I am losing my grip strength and now have to remember to only go to places with low lighting. 
 
Having long resigned myself to being essentially ignored, inconsequential, and unnoticed in fast food and bank queues by people not of the same age, I also have been accused of being a surly curmudgeon: vaguely cynical, furtive, temperamentally chilly, disapproving, and dismissive – but these are just signs that I’m a bit hard of hearing. 
 
Although, sometimes it would be nice. Like a few weeks ago. I was driving down the street, minding my own business, when a cyclist shouted something at me. It was either “In the end the king and pawn go in the same box” or “Your brake lights are out.” My windows were up, so it was hard to hear. 
 
But really, I hear when I want to.
 
And multi-tasking. It used to be that I could do twenty-seven things at once. Now it’s becoming increasingly difficult to do two things at once – especially to remember what both of them are. Things that happened in the mid-1980’s and Tuesday of last week, sit side by side in my memory. Like when I say “the other day”, it could be anywhere from yesterday to fifteen years ago. But this usually isn’t much a problem as long as I restrict my conversations to people older than me, although they are increasingly harder and harder to find these days. 
 

I also have to contend with the enormous volume of everything I’ve done and wish to forget: user manuals, bad sex, pop culture, questionnaires, dental visits, and at least ten bank account passwords. But my vocabulary has increased. Ossified, oximeter, cataracts, liver spots, glucosamine sulphate, acid reflux…all extremely interesting words once you get to understand them. 

I find as I wobble around the city, I’m like Fran Lebowitz, garrulously pointing out here and there memories and missing things: a gym where I once did 100 sit-ups – not in a row, the staircase where I suffered the tragedy of lusty, but unrequited love with an aristocrat from San Salvador, the apartment I lived in that always smelled like a combination of something that had been filtered through a sweat sock and a long-ago-sprayed bug treatment; continually haunted by what happened and what didn’t.  

I recently read that older people can see a third less than young people in the dark. Something to do with the amount of light that they can let in. They also suffer from floaters, making walking about a bit like groping through a forest full of falling black leaves on a dark night. Not much good when someone young points out a humming bird on a tree branch, but extremely useful when faced with a check-yourself-in machine at the airport. “I’m so sorry, I simply can’t possibly do it myself. I can’t see a thing!”
 

The Jungian psychologist James Hillman asks a shocking question: could ageing itself be conceived of as an art form? Can we become larger, contain multitudes? 

I don’t know about you, but I can finally hold a two-minute plank, just got off the brutal “W” trek in Chile almost unscathed, and can almost understand most of Wallace Stegner’s novels.

Maybe it’s time to age disgracefully. Jung in his wisdom, says that the goal in the second half of life, is to make it as interesting as possible. Personally, I think it’s a conspiracy of cluelessness.

Yet there is something cleansing about the loss of one’s looks and teeth, as there is about letting go of things once hoarded. It’s not so much a feeling of relief, but more of a challenge, a rite of passage. With luck, it can open the door to something that would be best described as character, if that didn’t sound so hopelessly old-fashioned. 
 
Ageing is a process of editing. It means loving new things and discarding old things. It means living as you want to live, not as you should. You know those people you don’t like much? Well, don’t bother with them. If someone has said “we must do lunch” for the last 20 years and you haven’t, you certainly are not going to go now, just as you aren’t going to put on that little hot pink number you wore to that nightclub in Nassau. 
 
We are now old enough to know what does not spark joy. Do you really want to go to a restaurant where they have substituted hamburger buns for doughnuts drizzled with mustard? No. Do you want to sit in bars where the music is so loud that you can’t order another mimosa from the waiter? No again. And believe me, nothing makes you feel older than drinking cheap white wine and making small talk with people who ask you about wills and white walls. 
 
Nevertheless, I’m looking forward to getting my card from the King, or whoever’s at the helm at that moment.
 

Ask Karyn: Valentine’s Day Advice for Every Situation

As you are probably well aware, tomorrow is February 14. It is also Ferris Wheel Day. Probably related to Valentine’s Day. Of course, if you’re single, you can spend tomorrow spreading the word about Singles Awareness Day. 

Yes, Valentine’s Day can hit us right in the feels. Some have the urge to duck and cover until the day passes. Some eat Rocky Road right out of the carton with a fork. Some spend part of their annual income on flowers, singing telegrams, battery-operated teddy bears and fuzzy socks. And then there are some who wait for National Discounted Chocolate Day. 

But first things first. I’ve been advised by my very real lawyers that I can’t technically call myself an Advice Columnist. They suggest – Humble Public Service Conduit. Personally, I prefer “Relationship Guru”. The fact that I have a doctorate in literature is mere coincidence. Also, I’m older than most people realize.  

In light of my impressive credentials, many people over the years have come to me in their time of need, and I’ve dispensed advice to soothe their souls, however harsh — like a discount store, one might say. If my certificate is meaningless to you, rest assured that I am also a Cancerian with the preternatural ability to know things without knowing how I know them, and really that’s all the qualifications anyone should need to tell people how to live their lives. Since I am a sucker for sappy love, I feel no guilt about giving advice on how to navigate this important non-holiday.


So as a Relationship Guru, I have chosen, in honour of The Day, to only take questions focusing on 
LOVE. The big one. That almighty stumper of a question. What is it? Where do I find it? I have lost mine, can I have yours?
Love means you’re always saying you’re sorry.
Dear Relationship Guru (RG): I met this guy who at first seemed ideal: outdoorsy, fun-loving, attractive – his butt, the most sculpted thing since Michelangelo made David. But then I learned some things that are giving me second thoughts. It turns out he’s a convicted embezzler.Signed, Bowden Barb Dear Bowden Barb: We all have a past. Don’t worry about it.
Stop waiting for your prince on a white horse. Go and find him.
The poor man might be lost or stuck on an island or something.
Dear RGI’ve got crushes on hundreds of people but I have never spoken to most of them. Why do I expect a crush to come and find me in my bedroom that I never leave?Signed, Tribe and TrueDear Tribe and True: Excessive crushing is not the problem here. The problem also isn’t with never leaving your bedroom. You don’t have to leave your room to meet people, or make friends, or turn a crush into something more, thanks to the expedient convergence of Snapchat and Twitch. Using these shows that you are open to connections and building solid relationships.
Relationships are like a walk in the park. Jurassic Park.
Dear RG:I am hung up on someone who lives in Puerto Rico. They have expressed what I would describe as lukewarm feelings bordering on actual feelings. Do I have to cut them off, at least until we’re in the same country again? Signed, Card Wired Dear Card Wired: Yes, long distance romance is gut-wrenchingly difficult even in the same country. However. And this is a big HOWEVER. I do not think your situation will be resolved by being in the same country. This is a deeper transportation issue. My practical advice is this: if you are hung up on this person to the degree that it is interfering with your ability to go to clubs, be charming, and explore new hobbies (romantic or otherwise), then you owe it to yourself to not trade in your Air Miles. 
A burrito is totally an acceptable life partner, right?
Dear RGI’m as romantic as the next guy, but my wife never seems to appreciate my Valentine’s Day gifts. Every year, I do my best to find my wife something special, but it never fails that I somehow let her down. Is a George Gorman grill, air fryer, or a crock pot such horrible gifts? She seems to love to cook and I love to eat. Am I not, technically, bringing us closer together? Signed, Kitchen CasanovaDear Kitchen CasanovaAlthough Cupid is a younger, shorter, diaper-wearing version of Santa, I have to tell you, you’re driving the right car, but heading down the wrong road. What you need to do is to pick an inexpensive restaurant and tell her you want to give her a night off. The food definitely won’t compare to what she makes for you on a nightly basis, but you want to show your appreciation. This certainly is a collaborative project that will bring you closer together, as well as fill your tummy. Besides, there is nothing more heart warming than seeing table after table filled with couples who haven’t been out for a nice meal together since last Valentine’s Day. Sentimentality just can’t be faked.
Love may be temporary, but memes last forever.
Dear RG: How do I get a girl to answer my texts? Signed, TeddyDear TeddyOne of my favorite works of literature said that if you want someone to think about you, leave a photo of yourself in their ham sandwich. I’m sure they will respond next time.
Facebook should have a limit on how many times you can change your relationship status. After 3 it should default to “Unstable”.                      
Dear RG: How do I handle Valentine’s Day as a poly person? I have three partners at the moment and want all of them to feel special. But divvying up the day for each feels weird and exhausting. What should I do?Signed, Many ValentinesDear Many Valentines: Handle the day by ignoring all of your partners. Instead, do your taxes. It wouldn’t be VD without a little emotional scarring.
Asking someone to marry you is a rather cruel thing to do to someone you care about.                                                                                                            
Dear RG: I have been married for almost 15 years and I hold the position that I am no longer under any obligation to partake in the Valentine’s Day silliness. My wife begs to differ, her position is that “if I loved her” I would look forward to needlessly spending money on a silly manufactured custom.Signed, NOT Obligated Dear NOT Obligated: Not that I’m necessarily taking your wife’s side, but any declaration about romantic gestures that begins with “If you loved me…” is suspect at best. And I would object if she never did sweet things for you. But, dude, you’re putting up quite a a fight against buying her something touching and heartfelt. For example, you could pick out some pictures of yourself and print them out at London Drugs. They cost about 28 cents per image. Or a nice bath mat – something you’ve always wanted. 
Current relationship status. Made dinner for two. Ate both.
Dear RG: I’m single for the first time in two years. What should I do with myself on Valentine’s Day? SignedSingles Awareness DamselDear SAD: Whatever the heck you want. You have only to face the consequences. Watch an obscure Polish silent film. Eat Guacamole dip with your bare hands. If there was ever a time to be downing cocktails and the Marvin Gaye, it’s now. Incidentally, if you are more art-inclined, I highly recommend either nude drawing or a boudoir photography session.
My wife and I were happy for 20 years — then we met.
Dear RG: My significant other claims they don’t want to celebrate Valentine’s Day.Signed, Sentimental Sam Dear Sentimental SamThis is a trap. 
 
Non-holidays come and go, but it’s the gestures we remember. 
Batteries not included. 

Happily ever after,
RG

You’ve Got Mail

To: Love-less Listings
From: Crazy House Home Staging 

As you are probably well aware, it will soon be February 14. It’s also Detached Homes Day. Probably related to Valentine’s Day. 

Yes, Valentine’s Day can hit us right in the feels. Some have the urge to duck and cover until the day passes. Some eat Rocky Road right out of the carton with a fork. Some spend part of their annual income on flowers, singing telegrams, battery-operated teddy bears and fuzzy socks. And then there are some who wait for National Discounted Chocolate Day. 

But first things first. I’ve been advised by my very real lawyers that I can’t technically call myself a Staging Advice Columnist. They suggest instead – Happily Ever After Public Service Conduit. And the fact that I have a doctorate in literature is mere coincidence.

Also, I’m older than most people realize.  In light of my impressive credentials, over the past 24 years, many realtors have come to me in their time of need. Thus I have organized countless heart-stopping book shelves, pantries and closets to soothe their souls, however ruthless — like a container store, one might say.

If my certificate is meaningless to you, rest assured that I am also a Cancerian with the preternatural ability to do things without knowing how I do them, and really that’s all the qualifications anyone should need to tell people how to stage their listings.  

Since I am a sucker for saleable houses, I feel no guilt about giving sage advice on how to set the stage for this important non-holiday. 


“You had me at the welcome mat.”

Like swiping left on Tinder, buyers quickly dismiss a potential house just because, like going on a first date with a regrettable haircut, a questionable fashion decision, and enough makeup to paint a small yacht, it just doesn’t make a good first impression.  

As buyers search online for potentials, I always wonder how they could possibly fall in love with a house showing photos of empty pizza boxes, snow shovels, and unmade beds.  I prefer bouquets of flowers, teddy bears in children’s rooms, fluffy white bathrobes, candles around the tub, and chocolates. Cause chocolate never asks stupid questions.

“I’m also just a girl, standing in front of a house, asking someone to buy it.” 

Setting the scene is hard to do when it comes to selling a home, but it’s an important step if you want to sell to other people. I mean, our one task is to make friends with reality.  

Sure, you could get away with a little “virtual staging”. But then, buyers meet in-person and…nothing! While an appealing image is critically important, the real thing should not disappoint.  You need to woo buyers toward that kind of match, to realize its full potential. It often only requires a couple of hours of accessorizing, de-cluttering, moving some furniture around, and hanging art well. 

“It doesn’t matter if the guy is perfect or the house is perfect, as long as they are perfect for each other.”

Realtors are matchmakers in the middle of love connections. Buying a house is about facts and data, but also about chemistry and emotion. We want to make it love-at-first-sight: for just one meeting to know – this is THE ONE.

A home that imbues spaces with character and personality.  Resulting in nothing short of a fairytale ending.

“I came tonight because when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life in a house, you want the rest of your life to start as possible.”

You want to put your best foot forward so buyers feel akin to being hit by Cupid’s arrow: lots of excitement.  

This is where good staging comes in; it not only increases the value, diminishes your time and energy, shortens the time on the market, but leaving both homeowners and sellers happily ever after. 

A perfect love story. 

15 Ways to Keep Your Clutter

Ugh! Purging is really hard, especially if you’re someone like me who has implacable standards, a mediocre schedule, and an addiction to TikTok “conspiracy” theories about moon landings.
Insta-grammers are always posting pictures of gee-gaws and gimmicks to show that “there’s a way to display and store everything.”  If that’s true, how come I can’t seem to find a way to exhibit my collection of ceramic squirrel egg cups I’d amassed in the nineties on eBay, for reasons that now elude me, or my vintage collection of “Sides of Houses” posters?  

I know what you’re thinking: Couldn’t I frame up some of those posters and line my hallway with them?

Sure, but full disclosure. To be a highbrow designer/organizer like me, you have to be willing to be clever. And that’s gonna take hustle, drive, and early-morning runs. 

I mean, who wants to look at a bunch of malnourished squirrels not holding hard boiled eggs lined up on a bookshelf? Besides, that’s where I keep my swim goggles, heart-shaped chocolate boxes, and appliance-related binders of impressive width.

Yes, I’m sure there are good solutions out there, but I’ll tell you this: I haven’t run into many. Every week or so, I peruse the local chapters of Big Box stores and watch old HGTV episodes mourning the lack of new and creative ways to appease my anxious attachment style. (which is why I tend to write so much about decluttering). Sometimes, I’ll even take time out of my day to wonder about how the economy works. 

So today I want to make a case for:the colonial impulse to collect and own that collecting is natural and frequently underrated. The oddest things can have the best stories — and the most meaning.
Clutter is either a mindless attachment to the material — or a mindless indifference to it. Something that you are not enjoying on a daily basis.
No, I’m not talking about the “clutter”emporiums of bric-a-brac possessions stacked like a Jenga tower in your garage, basement or storage unit that you have clung to as if they were holy water in a scorched desert, or the clutter bubble-wrapped in guilt, or the clutter that Alexander Fleming left in his laboratory while he went away on vacation resulting in mold contaminating one of his petri dishes.  

Nor am I defending pathological hoarder behaviour. Like Andy Warhol, for instance, who apart from being a formidable collector, was also a major hoarder. At the end of a day, he would often sweep the things on his desk—newspaper clippings, old letters, half a sandwich—into a carton, label it “T.C.,” for time capsule, date it, and store it. 
So before you run screaming in search of garbage bags and socks that don’t match, note that there may be clutter that you should hang on to, rather than villainize and purge from your life in a heartless way; what Rob Walker calls“mindful materialism.” 

Yes, I’m advocating and honouring the sort of, you know, hard to defend attraction we have for certain objects.  Now the reason we often have a hard time parting with our most whacky, minuscule, oddball, or seemingly unimpressive tchotchkes, is because these objects resurrect and enhance memories of a time in our life, a trip we took, a person we knew, an experience we had, a feeling we had.

They evoke and are affiliated with meaning. 
A elephant fashioned out of pop cans bought on the side of the road near Cape Town, a pencil holder you made in Grade Seven, a box of loose buttons from your grandmother, a necklace your friend gave you when she moved to Honolulu, your first pair of eyeglasses, a worn door handle decoration, a little leather camel, a rusty watering can.  These items can have emotional resonance far beyond their monetary and provenance value. They have memorable value; nebulous, malleable and priceless in their own unique way. 
                 
                           

Always Something Here to Remind Me 

In this sense, I submit that some sentimental items are necessary: they symbolize values, capsulize memories, and tell life stories. And that is not something to be taken lightly.                   

“Keep the best of the best and declutter the rest.”

 But remember, memorabilia is for retrieving pleasant memories, not miserable ones. For those, there are always websites, such as NeverLikedItAnyway.com that will buy your ex’s leavings, ranging from engagement rings to odd socks found under the bed.

Or a garage sale, a testament to the hours of preparation it takes to make $35.

Also PutItAtTheEndOfTheDriveway.com

Nowadays, when bland imitation is everywhere, your objects of choice should make you smile and pump in endorphins just by holding or looking at them. You don’t need to be able to mount a defence in a court of law to justify them. You just have to sort of say, “Look, this makes me happy.” 
 

THE KEY is to find room for your special things without the room looking jumbled and random. You don’t want to make your things look like uninvited guests at a party and have rooms devoid of inspiration and emotion, but instead, a space that feels homey, to be able to say, “This is my place, my fortress, my safe place.” 

By all means, jettison your belongings when you recognize that the amount of stuff you own has impacted a home’s ability to function as it should, or prevents you from performing tasks well.  

But before performing a Wild West showdown by renting a large U-Haul, recover your sense of agency and dig through that treasure chest of trinkets that has a story to tell, a memory to revive, an experience to remember. These objects that fertilize eye-watering comfort are bridges to other people, places, and times. It’s the poignant interplay between your senses, memories, and emotions.  

Each person has a story that should be told about their lives and their joy and their losses, and all of that stuff. 

Maybe the point is to proofread and edit the past tense of your life story — so you can continue writing it in the present tense. Cause some things are meant to be seen and touched. 

Well, it’s almost dark and I still have to find a place for my toothpick collection. 

Superheroes that Conquer the Staging Blues

It’s a bird…. It’s a plane…it’s… 

When people hear ‘Superheroes’, they immediately think of Dead Pool, Spider-Man, Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, and that’s about it.  

Some wear questionable tights, sport colourful capes, and have traits such as guarding the galaxy, controlling a swarm of bees, acquiring gills to swim underwater…and some – the hired-hero ability to sell a house profitably. 

Sellers often expect realtors to be Superheros: to get results “faster than a speeding bullet”, to have “X-ray vision” by seeing things through, and come to the closing table by “leaping tall buildings in a single bound”.

The training, paperwork, negotiations, erratic hours, driving on Deerfoot, another cold coffee — there are a host of logistical problems that would stymie even the best of heroes.  Day in and day out. No, it’s not easy to be a realtor–superhero.  But even the strongest superheroes must have their aids.

Every Superhero has an Arch Nemesis 

I’ll bet that some of your listings are so cluttered and unorganized that sometimes it crosses your mind to leave a “Dear Burglar” note, urging any intruder to help themselves.  

Dimensional storage is a trope in comic books that has characters pull objects from a space where they wouldn’t typically fit, the result of spatial manipulation.  

At first, the ability to organize anything with very few constraints or limitations sounds like it could only earn a hero a notable place in the annals of selling history. However, while it doesn’t necessarily offer any major combat advantages when it comes to breaking into or out of things such as safes or prisons, it is shockingly helpful when selling a house. 


                                     The Kryptonite Weakness 

Whether it’s in a bathroom cabinet, kitchen cupboard, or closet, a hero can store anything so long as it fits through the entry point. It’s a trick that redefines the concept of organizational genius.

There is no storage issue that can’t be taken on. 

Shape shifter
Gather cleaners and tools in a caddy which can simply be pulled out, used, and put back.

A caped crusader
In times of duress, the fortification of closets can bring immeasurable profit. 

Invisibility 
There often is space beneath a bed, so make full use of it by sliding boxes underneath. As long as it’s hidden from view. 

Alternative Versions 
See-through containers are essential when you need to grab and go: choose acrylic, plastic, or glass holders. 

Defenders
Rely on risers to keep items organized and to double up on storage space.

A plan of attack 
Hooks – so simple, so helpful! Hang them anywhere in an entry, hallway, or bedroom and they will instantly become decorative AND storage. 

Phantom Agents 
Builder’s grade light fixtures? Look no further than Tulip Lights. 

Super heroes are needed in this world, and no more so when it comes to selling a house.

Tights and cape optional.

Needed a Change of Altitude


“Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.” – Dorothy in “The Wizard of Oz”

NOTE: The below forms a record of events that really happened. Everything possible has been done to embellish them.

What I love about the past is that it’s over. 

There are some views that are so iconic that they’re instantly recognizable – the Mona Lisas and Starry Nights of the natural world. They’re places that, even though you’ve seen hundreds of photos, feel surreal as you’re standing there, gazing, happily letting time slip away as you soak in their remarkable spirit.

“What is this life if, full of care. We take no time to stand and stare…” – W. H Davies

I never professed to live my life only by getting to the end of it, as a ticket to get to the future, but one of curiosity and considered challenges, and as Orwell said, to be left to myself, like cattle let loose on the plains of Argentina. As well, conscious naïveté holds me firm in its stead.

This life motto has often led to unsurpassed surprises, accomplishments one didn’t know one needed, and in this case, a knee strain, screaming quads, and a win for a large rock that somehow hit the side of my head when my head fell against it, leading to an ever changing profusion of colours seldom seen in the most stunning of sunsets. 

“If something’s hard to do, then it’s not worth doing.” – Homer Simpson

Thus, enter the serrated granite spires of Torres del Paine in Chile, a trio of peaks that look like daggers shooting straight out of the earth.

Torres del Paine National Park; a place so epic and otherworldly, its name is often spoken with a kind of hushed reverence. This vast and dramatic stretch of Chilean Patagonia is home to some of the most mind-blowing beautiful scenery on Earth, and hiking the 76 km. “W-trek” is one of the greatest ways to immerse yourself in it.

It is undoubtedly one of the best (and challenging) treks in Patagonia, beset by ice fields, turquoise lagoons, glacier-fed waterfalls and verdant forests – and rocks, lots of rocks. 

 So I said, “How hard can it be?” (2 AM in bed is perhaps not the optimal moment of which to derive a true picture of reality.)It seems that each country I go to separates me further from financial security and an understanding of my purpose on Earth.



So I set off, flying from Barilouce to Buenos Aries to Santiago to Puerta Natales, with nothing but a song in my heart and a pocket full of dreams.

But my benchmark for what was enjoyable and what was not, was soon to be lowered over the next four days. 

“Too much is never enough.” – Immortal words attributed both to Mick Jagger and 18th-century playwright Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais        

The mileage and elevation gain of the W-Trek is no joke – 76 kms. and 2730 metres of climbing through Torres Del Paine National Park. In other words, about 100,000 steps – most of it up and down. There are some sections that clock up altitudes of over 610 meters in just a few hours, only to lose it that afternoon.

If there’s one constant about the weather in Patagonia, it’s that there’s nothing constant about it.

The cocktail “wind & rain” have you soaked within minutes: sleet to snow to heavy rain to sun can come in a matter of minutes. Spring in the Patagonian mountains is known for its extreme winds which can reach speeds of up to 161 kph. We heard plenty of stories of pack covers and rain ponchos being whipped off and torn to shreds. And of 6’ men being blown over, backpack and all. 

The trails are well-trodden, if not always well-marked, with packed mud, slippery mud, loose stones, gravel, wet rocks (my nemesis, see above), low streams and bridges.



Now there are some salient core principles involved when undertaking such a fundamental endeavour.

A walking pole becomes your new best friend.
You will spend evenings revisiting memories of your misspent youth and being reminded of muscle groups you forgot once existed.
Mornings will see you rise as if recovering from open heart surgery. 
Sore calves and aching quads are badges of honour, with blisters and lost toenails marks of pride.
You find that the width of backpack straps decrease with distance hiked. To compensate, the weight of the backpack increases.
There’s such a thing as ‘too much fresh air’.
Mountains do what they are hired to do.

“We leave something of ourselves behind when we leave a place, we stay there, even though we go away.” ~ Pascal Mercier

                                                      
Day One. Climb and Punishment: Las Torres
My notes simply state: ‘trekking hell starteth here’.

After 22 kms. and 8 hours, the climb to Las Torres begins in earnest. It’s a gritty, demanding rocky terrain of steep, gravelly inclines and large boulders. There are moments when I, between ragged breaths, would look up and see tiny trekkers far above, feeling that the climb would never end.

It’s at least an hour of the final gruelling ascent, but in exchange, if you dare look down, the panoramas are absolutely breathtaking.

To quote Ed Viesturs, getting to the top is optional, getting down is mandatory.

The knee-buckling and slippery downward journey is more challenging than the climb up, and my legs are screaming by the time I get down. Really, to use theological terms, it is just too frigging much.I was beyond grateful for my hiking pole. One pole was ideal as it left me with a free hand to grab tree branches and boulders, haul myself up and down, and catch my fall when I slipped. Which was often. 

Cause just when you need an arm or a leg, suddenly the body has other things to do.

 

Day 2 – Come Hill or High Water: Lake Nordenskjöld
Despite feeling like my heart might explode, we cover the distance in around eight muscle-busting hours, with a few stops to take in the views, rehydrate, and give our racing pulses a break. And lucky enought to sight a couple of condors and no pumas.
Distance: 16 kms.  Time: 8 hours 



Day 3 – I don’t get it. The trail looked so flat on the map: French Valley
Days are long. Here, you get a stunning view of a hanging glacier that comes straight from Paine Grande, the highest peak in the region (3050 metres).
Distance: 14 kms. Time: 7 hours

 

Day 4 – I think I’ve peaked!: Glacier Grey
Distance: 11 kms. Time: 3.5 hours. 



The consensus?

A strange kind of exhilarated fatigue. Where endurance and stamina matter a lot. 

And a huge one for the books.

Anyways, this is how I remember it.

Don’t Cry for Me Argentina – A Backward Glance

         

What world is this, the place I had come to? 

There it was before me. 

Buenos Aries, an eclectic cocktail of fast-moving, seductive, chaotic, exuberant; a clamourous nexus of place unrestricted by considerations of time and place. Adorable and maddening, sensuous and scatty, surprising and subtle, difficult and endlessly charming.

New versus old, speed versus slow, familiarity versus discovery; all laying rise to be termed the “Paris of South America”: a fitting sobriquet. 

Everything was pitched in a higher key.

Buenos Aries is a city of both disparate tones and Epicurean textures, gratifying my sense of beauty and craving for the external finish of life, yet and at the same time, presenting a sharp meagerness of destitution. 

“Ah, the multiplicity of its appeals – the perpetual surprise of its contrasts and resemblances.” Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth

It’s quite a mess. I mean, for one thing, the city thinks it’s European: Neapolitan balconies, Moorish courtyards, English mansions, Gaudi-inspired domes, New York skyscrapers, French parks and cobble stone streets that hobble the best of us. 

But who cares? Give me chaotic anytime. I prefer my cities a little on the crazy side. After all, the city has the highest proportion of psychoanalysts per head of population on the planet — three times the rate of New York. 

It’s said that Argentinians could commit suicide by jumping off their own egos. 

A century ago, it was the capital of the sixth richest country in the world, but middle age brought one crisis after another — until eventually the whole place is pretty well reduced to a sad Andrew Lloyd Webber musical.

But Buenos Aires has the humanity to plant trees. Lots of them. And cafes. 


Buenos Aries has cafes the way Rome has churches. 

Here cafes are sanctuaries and they are on most every street, with battered espresso machines that look as if they were imported from Italy in 1932.

Buenos Aires takes its time waking up.

We are often the first to breakfast – 11 a.m. An hour regarded synchronous with sunrise. Sitting in my pew nursing a café cortado and a medialuna de jamon y queso is about as close to heaven as I was ever going to get. 


Walking my trillion steps a day, I happily endure cars honking, people shouting, music blaring. The streets are filled with kamikaze drivers hurling their vehicles through intersections, jammed with zooming taxis and groaning buses. Sidewalks are a contact sport. As well as hopping over dog poop. 

There are couples making out in parks, in front of statues, on sidewalks and on street corners, more than any other city I have ever been in. PDA is at an all time high here: it’s a town for extroverts.  

Buenos Aires is a city that rarely sleeps. 

I was never sure when porteños slept, because they seemed to be awake at almost any hour of the night. 

You can get a great meal at one in the morning and not have waiters stand over you urging you to leave. And in Buenos Aries, you must never be in a hurry.  

You can’t start the evenings festivities until late…like really late. We’re talking 2 AM. with some places staying open until 7 AM. You will see 3 year olds with their families exiting a restaurant at 1:30 in the morning and 80 year old couples strolling casually down Corrientes Avenue with ice cream at midnight. There will be people singing and laughing in the streets, trying to make their way back home after a night on the town. Most of them passing under my bedroom window.

“Bad wine” and “Argentina” don’t belong in the same sentence.

It’s a town where I can forget my sorry self and enjoy that trifecta of local passions: the whip-quick moves of sultry tango, robust wine, and succulent grass-fed pampas steaks the size of a hat you can cut with a spoon. 

All I know is that an Argentinian Malbec is never a mistake and often cheaper than water in restaurants. 


In Buenos Aires, there is no food without meat. 

Argentina is one of five countries in the world that has more cows than people. Meat-coma inducing carnivores will be in their element. Vegans and vegetarians, turn away now.

Argentina is unapologetically carnivorous, and tucking into an oversized steak is a point of national pride. I’m convinced that Argentinians subsist exclusively off of a diet of beef and carbs. 

It Takes Two to Tango

Dark, troubled, elegant, sexy, and fiendishly difficult to learn, it is one of the only dances in the world not meant to express joy. It originally dramatized the seductive moves thought to have been between a prostitute and her pimp. The lyrics are all about love, misery and death, deploying faces of melodramatic suffering. The pleasure of tango is its licence to be miserable; operating perfectly with my temperament. 

Nod thoughtfully. 


I’m staying in trending Palermo Soho, mimicking New York’s Soho district. It’s a nightlife epicenter, as well as its buzz-worthy cocktail bars, apartment buildings, shops, tree-lined boulevards, cobbled streets, grandiose neocolonial houses, and lively cafés-cum-art galleries. It’s indisputably the city’s busiest, most desirable neighborhood.

And the murals….


Buenos Aires stakes claim to many of “the biggest”, “the first”, “the highest”, “the longest”, “the most beautiful”…

Like the famous Avenida 9 de Julio, the worlds widest avenue. It has an astonishing 16 lanes; a boulevard that makes the Champs-Elysées look like a country lane. The entire avenue is bumper to bumper with snarling traffic during rush hour. I barely managed to cross it in one go.


Known as the bookstore capital of the world, Buenos Aires has an unbelievable 734 shops across the city – that’s 25 bookstores for every 100,000 residents. 

As a passionate bibliophile, I had to visit and was transfixed by the majestic El Ateneo, often referred to as the world’s most beautiful bookshop. As the famed Argentinean writer, Jorge Borges once said, ‘I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library’ andthe El Ateneo Grand Splendid bookshop, housing over 120,000 books, is certainly that kind of paradise. 

This theater-turned-cinema was converted into a bookstore in the early 2000s. Much of the interior, including the ornate carvings and frescoed ceiling, remain intact. Bookshelves replaced the rows of seats and the theater boxes were left for customers to curl up with a book. Dark red curtains frame the stage, home to a quaint café to work on your caffeine level. 


Then there is the Feria de San Telmo – the largest street market in South America.



They also have the highest percentage of pets per capita in the world. Dogs are particularly popular, with 60% of households owning at least one.

Buenos Aries has the largest Japanese garden outside of Japan. 

Then we have Argentinian Jorge Bergoglio, a.k.a. Pope Francis, the first pontiff from the Americas
Fun fact. Before he entered the seminary, Jorge/Francis was a bouncer at a Buenos Aires nightclub. He is a man who knows how to dance the tango and its equally sensuous cousin, the milonga. He is a lifelong admirer of Jorge Luis Borges. And like virtually everyone in Argentina, he is a soccer fanatic. San Lorenzo, to be exact. 


Buenos Aires has what is considered one of the world’s most beautiful cemeteries – El Cementerio de la Recoleta, second only to Pere Lechaise in Paris. It spans four city blocks, holds no less than 6400 graves, and has as its most famous tenant, First Lady Eva Duarte de Perón. (Evita)

Eva Peron’s grave is an understated monument with a tumultuous backstory.

When President Juan Peron was ousted in a military coup three years after Eva’s death, no one was sure what to do with Evita’s perfectly embalmed body. Unfortunately, it was entrusted to Colonel Moori Koenig. As she was shuttled between various hiding places in Buenos Aires, he became enamoured with the body. Eventually, he was accused of “un-Christian” acts, and the colonel and the corpse had to be separated. Perhaps his therapist was on holiday at the time. Evita’s body was then shipped to Milan and buried under a false name. Years later, when it was returned, it was interred in Recoleta beneath thick steel plates, possibly in case Koenig came looking.

At least that’s one of the stories. 


The labrynthine pathways of tombs and mausoleums of Le Recoleta contain many strange stories. Like that of Liliana Crociati, who died during her honeymoon (in an avalanche) and for whom her parents built a vault where they reproduced her bedroom and placed her sculpture at the entrance, wearing her wedding dress with which she was buried, accompanied by her inseparable dog.


Fútbol is a religion

Each team’s stadium is a temple. Games are wept over. Fought over. And spark serious family issues. 
Speaking of godlike figures, Maradona sits right up there next to the Virgin Mary and the Pope. He even has his own religion – Iglesia Araconiana, complete with its own set of Ten Commandments, including naming your first son Diego and considering the ball sacred.

Watching a footy match in Argentina is an intense, life-affirming moment, treated with the sort of fervour that borders on the obsessional. This experience will not be a quiet hour and a half sitting in the stadium watching 22 people kick a ball around. 



Think 7% inflation Is bad? Try 142%. 

To save up, Argentines stuff bundles of American bills into old clothes, beneath floor boards and in bombproof safe deposit boxes past nine locked gates and five stories beneath the ground. They spend their pesos as quickly as they get them, buying everything from TVs to potato peelers in instalments, betting the value of the peso will fall. In 2017, prices had risen so much that Argentina doubled the size of its largest bank note to 1,000 pesos, then worth about $58 on the black market. Today it is worth $1.52 Canadian. 

So my breakfasts are $3-$5 and a really great meal with a very good wine is $11-$25. 

“Cambio! Cambio!” 

I think there are more money changers than pigeons on Calle Florida. Which is where I went to exchange my pristine American dollar bills for Argentinian pesos. How it works is that men and women dubbed “arbolitos”, little trees, stand on the street yelling “Cambio! Cambio!” Once you accept a rate from one of the many sellers, they lead you to so-called caves to change the money in relative privacy. Then you put the piles of bills in a wheelbarrow or stuff them down your pants. 

It’s all illegal, but police standing nearby don’t seem to mind.



“You need to get out of the city once a week or you go crazy.” – Argentinian porteños

So we went to the city of Tigre, 30km. from B.A., an hour’s train journey. The ride cost us 15 cents.

Tigre is a tropical jungle where forested islands dot the murky river waters. It’s a riverside getaway with stilt houses, old mansions, aristocratic rowing clubs and craft shops. Life revolves around the river, with islands disconnected from the mainland. Islanders rely solely on boats, navigating the shallow rivers in small vessels.



But if you ever get the opportunity to come to Argentina (or Brazil), you must go to one of the most spectacular waterfalls in the world.

An UNESCO World Heritage Site, Iguazu Falls is the largest broken waterfall in the world, stretching over three kilometres. Made up of 275 individual cascades, they reach heights of 200 feet to create a stunning natural barrier between Argentina and Brazil, both visually and acoustically. We went to both the Argentinian side and the Brazilian side, as they are uniquely different. 

Not even the best of writers could describe the incomparable immensity, grandeur, powerfulness, vastness, and magnificence of Iguazu Falls. It challenges the paltry wealth of my vocabulary to even think to describe the experience. One needs to experience it. 

The sheer power and beauty offers a great deal more than sentimental adventure. Eleanor Roosevelt famously pined, “My poor Niagara!”, when she first saw the Iguazu Falls.

I left awestruck – and very, very wet. And very, very humbled. 


Te Amo Argentina!

Recipe for Success: Secrets from the Staging World

When Shakespeare wrote that all the world’s a stage, he probably never envisioned home stagers, those wizards of visual manipulation that magically transform interiors, imbuing purpose and functionality with the removal of a side chair or the placement of a throw pillow, similar to a beautifully directed play. 

There are many moving parts when it comes to staging a home for sale. But sometimes what is slightly off can be difficult to pinpoint.

I see it virtually every day, and it is quite disheartening—especially when many situations can be easily rectified and quickly accomplished before you open the door to your first potential buyer.  

So today for your viewing pleasure, here are a few Tricks of the Trade.” 

1. Let There Be Light, But Make Sure It’s Good Light.

Would you sell a car without taking it through the carwash and having it detailed?

The same goes for the lighting in the home. The colour of light significantly impacts the look and feel, as well as the size and shape of a room. 

All overhead, floor and table lamps should have the same warm-white light bulbs (2700-3000 K) instead of “cool white,” “daylight,” or “blue” hue, which can make everything appear paler and washed out. Or in the case of mismatched bulbs – quite erratic.Update by removing tie-backs on curtains and drapes.Open curtains, checking that the side window casings are not exposed.  Get 25% more light by removing window screens.Tuck lamp cords out of sight as much as possible



2. Hide the Evidence

I get it, sellers live in a house, not in a Crate & Barrel showroom. But before buyers ring the doorbell, all personal hygiene materials, cleaning supplies, and personal memorabilia needs to be stored away.

You want your buyers to be fantasizing about the rooms and wooing them with the home decor, not the dirty laundry in the bedroom closet.

And buyers don’t want to see all the trips the sellers have been on by viewing a multitude of fridge magnets—you want them to feel it could soon be their own home



3. Use the Goldilocks Theory

Just because it fits, doesn’t mean it fits.

Check for furniture that’s ‘just right’, removing pieces that are either too small or too large for the space.Example: Remove or add a leaf to the kitchen and/or dining room table.



4. It Just Makes Cents

Smell is shockingly important. Hands down the worst mistake is using plug-in air fresheners, as well as overpowering, chemically-scented home products that can either give buyers a headache or make them nauseous. 

Cigarette smoke, pet odours, and strong cooking smells may also trigger a negative reaction and/or create a suspicion that something is being covered up.

Erase all signs of pets. Potential buyers may have allergies.

5. The Crazy Ice Trick

Dents in the carpet from moving furniture?

Place ice cubes on the dents. When the ice melts and mostly dries, use the edge of a spoon to push the carpet fibers back in an upright position. A coin will also work. Voila! No more dents. 

 6. Flower Flash

Everyone deserves to be bowled over by nature’s rosy and unbridled beauty. Whether it’s a bouquet of simple tulips, a larger floral arrangement, or a potted plant, the sensory stimuli thay they provide perks up a bedroom, living room, dining room or a bathroom in no time.
First Course
Hang towels in thirds with no raw edges showing.
Paired With: Decorative soap dispensers.

Second Course
Bring books to the front of bookshelves.
Paired With: Hardcover, if possible. Only display books with spines.

Third Course
Clear appliances off kitchen counters. You want to sell counter space, not clutter.
Paired With: Except an espresso machine.

Fourth Course
Don’t set the table. It’s dated, distracting, looks gimmicky, screaming –“this home has been staged.”
Paired With: A large platter or a bouquet proportional to the table.

San Carlos de Barilouce: Living Inside a Refrigerator

I’m not going outside until the temperature is above my age.

Spring in Argentina’s San Carlos de Barilouce, makes a fiction entrance some might better describe as blistering, wrathful, diabolical. At least in my eyes. And body.


What this picture doesn’t show you is that it was approximately the same temperature as it would be if I’d been sitting on a glacier. Except colder. 

I know you can’t feel anything from where you are. You just have to believe me. 
At least the risk for mosquito activity is low.

For me, a holiday is best defined as “a woman lies down in the sun with a glass of wine and a book and gets up five to seven days later.”


But enough of that. I take up the burden of my tale. 

I didn’t plan to come here after Buenos Aires. I was supposed to go home. But as good fortune would have it, I have the marvelous? opportunity to go trekking in Patagonia Chile.

So I’m spending a few days of intermediate time here. I’m hoping that when I’m on this infamous Patagonian trek, I’ll be able to tell whether I have sustained an injury or that’s just how I am now. Cause sometimes I get winded just working my way through a bag of Skittles. 

Because of my unexpected detour and inclement weather, I’m wrapping up in my (only) three pairs of pants and five top layers, including raincoat and alpaca wool poncho. My poncho, a very welcome and timely purchase in Buenos Aires. 

They say there’s no such thing as bad weather, just bad clothing. Yes, well. 

I listen to the wind moan day and night, battle driving rain outside, I’m chilled to the bones. It’s a consummate shock from the comforting warmth of B.A.  


 A Slice of Switzerland

With its snow-capped peaks and crisp air, this laid-back city in Patagonia makes you question whether you have landed in Switzerland instead of Argentina.

Bariloche is a city surrounded by thousand-year-old forests, mountains covered in snow and crystal clear lakes. Seven to be exact. Each with a unique landscape.  

I have seen quite a few groups of teenagers prowling the streets and have learned it is quite common for high school students in Argentina to take a senior trip to Bariloche.  


To hike or not to hike, that is not a real question.

Those in the know will scoff and say, “What is wrong with you? Bariloche is world famous for its amazing hiking trails, mountain bike trails, zipline, rock climbing, chairlifts up to the top of the mountain…”

You see where I’m going here. And it’s not up. 

I’m not really afraid of heights, just falling from them. I get nervous just standing on a chair. 

 Eat your weight in chocolate.

“What you see before you, my friend, is the result of a lifetime of chocolate.” – Katharine Hepburn

Thankfully, Bariloche is known as the chocolate capital of Argentina. I’ve counted at least eighteen shops on Mitre Street alone. Any self-discipline I may have is tough, because I’m the boss of me and that guy runs a really loose ship. 

Besides chocolate never asks any stupid questions.


“To alcohol! The cause of, and solution to, all of life’s problems.”Homer Simpson 

And alcohol. Malbec, Pineapple Cider, Fernet, Cerveza artesanal beer, and rum. You can even pose with a Saint Bernard dog with a small barrel of rum around the neck; his neck, not yours.


And lots and lots of travel agencies, since the main goal of Bariloche’s tourists is to leave the city.
But there is a dark side to Bariloche. After WWII, some quite atrocious war criminals found refuge here. The most infamous one is Erich Priebke who lived here undisturbed until, in 1993, German investigators applied for extradition.

Sadly, it was not unusual that Nazi war criminals found a safe house in Argentina. Mr. Perón was very cooperative in this field.


Lately I’ve been thinking about “life reviews.” I first heard the term in an interview Jane Fonda did with Julia Louis Dreyfus on her podcast.

I found that sitting solo freezing in a dingy hotel room gazing at faded botanical prints gives you plenty of time to muse on the subject. As well as the importance of making yourself useful to the reader by solving their life problems, while dispensing with the fantasy that anyone actually cares about your experiences; in other words, generally getting over yourself. 

We of a certain age know what it means to lose things – your looks, your loves, your reading glasses…and to remember that it is simply courtesy to others to give yourself a once-over in the mirror. And that it’s probably too late to take up pole dancing.

I mean, I really don’t look like the woman in the hotel’s magnified bathroom mirror I saw last night. I thought, that can’t be right. And I will never let that happen again. Of course it was scary. Not even God wants to see us that close up. 

Well, I’m just getting ready to not go out, but instead to a late supper of a considerable good Malbec – in my room.