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The slot in the grocery store was empty; a gaping open mouth that should be holding a row of maple Wallaby yogurt containers.  But I wasn’t panicked yet.  I just asked the guy who was stocking the shelves if they had any in the back.

He checked and then walked up to me, empty-handed.  “This doesn’t bode well,” I nervously laughed.  “I know this because your arms are empty, and if you had yogurt, you would have brought it with you.”

“Yes,” he said.  “We’re out of maple yogurt.”

Before I could ask him when the next shipment would arrive, he continued, speaking slowly and staring deep into my eyes in order to drive home the seriousness of this situation.  “The distributor said that there will never be another container of maple Wallaby yogurt.  He is no longer carrying the maple Wallaby yogurt.  He can no longer ship the maple Wallaby yogurt.”

I almost fell backwards, unconscious, against the shelves, but I gathered my wits and ran out of the store to my car, pausing only to purchase the wild rice sticks that Josh requested.

I drove to Whole Foods, the only other store in the area to carry maple Wallaby yogurt.  Surely Jeff Bezos would have a superior distributor, one that stocks ALL the yogurt flavours.

But as my eyes scanned the shelves, the truth became clear.  There was no maple yogurt.  No space for a maple yogurt.  I knelt down on the floor and wept, by which I mean that I went to pick up the kids from school and broke the news.

I needed to understand why, so I called the customer care hotline number for Wallaby I found online.  “Why?” I asked the man on the other end of the line.  “Why?”

“Um… I think because it wasn’t a popular flavour.  Didn’t sell well.  They discontinued it.”

No.  No.  That is not how this works.  This is not how “shopping” and “food consumption” works.  You do not hook us on a yogurt flavour and then snatch it away when it becomes the only yogurt flavour my child will eat.  Once you release that maple yogurt into the wild, you keep making that maple yogurt until we tell you to stop making that maple yogurt.

Said child does not agree with me that pouring maple syrup into unflavoured yogurt achieves the same taste, though the child is willing to entertain the idea of a different brand of maple yogurt now that we know that our brand of maple yogurt has sailed.  But still.

(Could said child have chosen a more pain-in-the-ass, hard to find flavour?)

This hurt comes during a week when I also discovered our stain stick AND soap refill has been discontinued.

Discontinuations always happen in threes, they say.  I guess it was maple yogurt’s time to go.

Feel free to leave your own discontinuation story.

I clicked on a Lifehacker article because it promised to tell me ways to reward myself that do not involve food OR spending money.  I do not like to use food as a reward because one cookie is never enough, and I’m a big fan of not spending money.  But the activities outlined in the article didn’t feel like rewards.  They felt like things you should work into your life regardless of whether you’ve done something fantastic or not.

Like going on a walk or reading a book or playing a video game or getting together with friends.

Rewards should be something unusual that you only get because you’ve done X, not something you get whether or not you do X.  The only one that truly fit the bill was taking a day off.  I mean, yes, you also get that on the weekend, but grabbing a day for yourself when you should be at work feels properly celebratory.

But you can’t do that one very often.

The point is that I haven’t come up with anything better.  There are things I enjoy doing that do not involve food or money, such as going to the library and taking out a big stack of books just so I can feel like the owner for a few weeks.  Or doing crossword puzzles.  Or annoying the twins.  But I do all of those things regardless of whether I’ve accomplished anything else.

Do you have anything that you do that is an actual reward or treat that (1) does not involve food or money and (2) does not happen at any other time except when you accomplish something that deserves a reward or treat?

Right before the new year, Atlas Obscura had a post about the luckiest people of 2017.  It’s sort of a strange idea.  I mean, yes, I knew that the list would include people who had things work out for them in some amazing way, but it’s the idea of describing a person based on a moment in time.

We describe people as smart, which means that we think they are always intelligent albeit human and therefore capable of making bone-headed decisions every once in a while.  We describe people as pretty, and we don’t mean that they’re pretty on Monday but ugly on Tuesday.  We mean that we think they are attractive every day of the year.

But luck is a single moment.  Actions can certainly be lucky, but can people be lucky?  I mean, if that’s the case, take one of the people in the article.  If a tree fell on their house tomorrow, would they now be unlucky?  Could they be lucky on a Monday but unlucky on a Tuesday and then lucky again on Wednesday?  That is a slippery adjective.

It also feels judgmental when applied to a person vs a situation.  It designates some lives as unlucky in order to define the contrast of lucky.

Is this making sense?  Can people be lucky?

I love reading or listening to Annie Duke.  If you don’t know her, she’s a professional poker player.  While I have zero interest in poker, she is fascinating because she speaks often about strategy, especially strategy when you don’t have all the facts at your disposal, such as when you’re playing cards or making major life decisions (like family building).

Her book — Thinking in Bets — is coming out in early February.  I will definitely be reading it.  I’m going to guess you will, too, when you read the central question as per this article: “If a well-reasoned decision leads to a negative outcome, was it the wrong decision?”

Well?

We live that question every single day.  We make well-reasoned decisions that do not lead us to parenthood.  And then what?  How do you evaluate that decision, distancing your brain from the outcome?

I love this thought: “Wrap your arms around the uncertainty. Accept it. Know that the way things turn out has a lot of luck involved so don’t be so hard on yourself when things go badly and don’t be so proud of yourself when they go well. Focus on process instead.”  I have more thoughts about luck that I’m tossing around, but I think that word works here.

Read this interview if you have time because she says some very smart things about evaluating your decisions so you can make better decisions in the future, not so you can beat yourself up about past decisions.

Montreal boasts the world’s ugliest Christmas tree.  How can you stay home when you know that a short flight can deliver you to a world of unending crepes AND the ugliest Christmas tree?  We had to see it with our own eyes.

But going to Montreal in the middle of winter was not our smartest move.  It occurred to me after we landed that I had only been to Canada during warm(ish) months.  I mean, we had coats with us.  We had mittens and hats.  But flimsy fabrics are no match for -23 degrees.  The mucous froze in our nostrils the moment we stepped off the plane.

Still, as much as the cold thwarted our ability to do certain things, such as visit Olympic Park, climb Mont Royal, or go to La Ronde (for some crazy reason, they close the amusement park in the winter), we have zero regrets about going to Montreal in December (though we will never ever do it again).  It was beautiful.  Walking in the snow and looking at Christmas decorations is beautiful.  The city is pretty quiet in winter, with most people bundled up at home rather than venturing into museums and churches.

We ate vegan poutine (yes, it exists) and became regulars at a crepe place in the old city (go there — it’s fantastic).  We saw Aura, a laser light show in the Basilica.  We adored MontVR, a virtual reality arcade.  You need to set up an appointment to go, but they’re super flexible about it.  We could tell the twins were feeling a little frantic about using their hour well because the VR menu was in French and they’re slow translators.  Not only did the guy help them and give them a little extra time, but no one had the slot after us so we got to take a second hour on the fly AND the guy running the place sweetly talked computer specs with the Wolvog.

The highlight of the trip — for me — was finding Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Secours Chapel.  It’s a church in the old city — one of the oldest in Montreal.  The ceiling is decorated with little ships placed there by sailors seeking protection before they went out to sea.  It was such an emotional space, and I fell in love with Saint Marguerite Bourgeoys, the nun who founded the church, as well as its patron Jeanne Le Ber, who is buried in its walls.

My only regret about the trip (besides it being so cold that we couldn’t think if we walked more than two blocks at a time) turned into a non-regret.  On our first day, I saw a t-shirt about poutine that I really liked, but I decided not to get it for myself because it was the first day.  Rookie traveling mistake.  By the last day, I hadn’t seen anything I liked as much, and I decided to release myself from trying to find a t-shirt to bring home.  It wasn’t meant to be, and I had dozens of great photos from the trip.  Plus I knew we’d be back, and maybe the store would still carry the shirt.  In our last hour in Montreal, we were running out to pick up our last Kinder Surprise (the twins just learned the joy of the Kinder Surprise this trip as well as the disappointment that all Kinder eggs needed to be consumed before going home) and we passed a store with fun pillows in the window.  I decided to duck in to see if they had shirts and they did — SHIRTS WITH SLOGANS ABOUT POUTINE.

The lesson here: Act like a leaf in the river when you travel and the universe will bring you the right t-shirt at the right time.

Other highlights:

An art installation in the sewer walk (yes, you read that correctly) in a museum:

Learning everything I never knew I wanted to know about hockey:

Going to the Barbie Expo with the ChickieNob:

Finding one of my books in a Canadian bookstore:

Dinner at Schwartz’s deli where the guys were so nice to us and didn’t laugh at my dinner of two half-sour pickles and a Cott black cherry soda.  (What?  There is nothing else vegetarian on the menu.)

Cannot wait to go back to Canada… when it’s warmer.  I loved being surrounded by French and seeing the kids trying to figure everything out.  And, you know, crepes and vegan poutine.  Does it get any better than that?