life on the muskoka river

Delores - Letter from a Friend

2012-01-26T14:38:00.002-05:00

Where did Delores come from? Other than the glint in her daddy's eye?

I'm thinking here.. she's been hanging out on the banks of the Muskoka River since practically forever, or maybe last year's April A to Z Blogfest, whatever came first. Argh – this is bugging me now. Hang on while I find out...

OK. Back. I just spent the last half an hour reading old blog posts from last April to find Delores' first comment and found myself laughing out loud at the ridiculousness of my doofussy damned door contest. Coincidentally, that's where I first had a comment from Delores: "Been browsing around your blog...love it. Thanks for dropping in on thefeatherednest."

There were TONS of other comments on that post (which makes me think I need to do another contest soon. Maybe I'll do a Damned Office Contest, as per Deanna Schrayer's suggestion) and Delores' was rather small and quiet and dignified, hardly standing out amongst the madding crowd. But you know what? Almost a year later, I rarely see some of those commenters, while Delores is a faithful and enthusiastic friend. Don't get me wrong – I'm definitely not criticizing other commenters. I know how things work. You drop by for a while, you have a nice visit, and then you're off to visit new friends or old friends or just different friends. There's not enough time in the day to visit every single blogger on your list every single day.

But Delores, she almost always drops by. I really appreciate that about her. Even when I have absolutely nothing funny, or interesting, or even cogent to say, she is there with a nice comment. (Oh please, Delores, don't feel obligated now.) Not that I'm the only blog she follows. FAR from it. Everywhere I go, Delores is there, spreading her cheerful self through the blogging world. Everyone loves her. Don't believe me? Check out one of her blogs – she gets more visitors than good-looking lifers at the penitentiary.

Delores blogs at three places: The Feathered Nest, which has insightful personal commentary, some fabulous poetry and fiction, as well as all kinds of cool stuff. On Robbie Burns Day, for example, she had photos of Woodlawn Park Cemetery where the great granddaughter of the famous Scottish bard is buried. You never know what you're going to find in Delores' fine feathered nest.

The Tormented Scribe is a tad on the spooky side. The top photo is a cemetery and there's lots of dark-edged poetry and stories and things that go bump in the night.

Delores even has a blog full of poems and stories for children. It's called Youngish and she is currently running a limerick contest where the prize is a big box of crayons! I LOVE new boxes of crayons... I may have to enter this. How about:

There once was a girl named Delores

Who gargled with spearmint Lavoris

Her breath smelled so sweet

That she leapt to her feet

And eloped with a young stud named Boris.

Annnnnnd that's why I don't write poetry, folks! I'll leave that up to Mizz Delores.

Most of my bloggy friends live a long way away, some as far as Australia. Delores is actually one of the few people who live nearby – just a couple hours in the car, as a matter of fact, in a part of southern Ontario I used to know fairly well. It would be fun to pay her a visit some day, steal a cup of coffee or two, and see what she really looks like! As you can see from the photo she sent, and the lack of last name, my friend Delores is a woman of mystery. Maybe her letter will reveal a few of her secrets ...

Dear Cathy:

Here we are, half way through the first month of the New Year. It’ s a sobering thought isn’t it? How quickly time moves along. Christmas seems so long ago and so far away and yet experience tells us it will be here again long before we are ready.

The New Year stretches before us blank and exciting as an artist’s canvas waiting for that first splash of colour. How will we paint the New Year? Will we use the same old brushes, strokes and colours as last year or will we break free and try something new?

Looking back I can see there are some things I definitely want more of. Certainly I want more grandchildren time (if my body can handle it), more time holding a camera, looking at antiques and collectibles, writing poetry, watching the birds, prowling cemeteries, definitely more blogging..... Oh yes, there are things that bear repeating for sure. Some things, however, could go by the wayside. We have already taken some steps toward change for this year. One thing we have decided to cut way back on is eating out. Small changes to things that were not enhancing our lives will be made. This is our promise to each other. This year we will enlarge upon the things we know we love to do, discard the things that fail to make life better and keep ourselves open to new ideas, activities and people.

We have a few plans for refurbishing our nest this year (our feathered nest). Nothing too grandiose, just a few tweaks and improvements are required. A little paint, some trim, a new carpet will breathe life into the old house. We are blessed to have this roof , this shelter from the storms of life, over our heads.

I must say, Cathy, I have been impressed and encouraged with your success in weight loss this year. I am going to make an attempt myself. You have inspired me.

Anyway my dear, the day calls; the hectic, harried life of a retiree (lol). Important things need to be done; bathing, dressing, eating...you know the drill. It snowed last night and I want to take some pictures. Decisions need to be made about what to do with that lump of raw meat on the counter. I feel the faint flutter of a poem in the back of my mind; something about bed and rest and rise to the test, best, nest, dressed, stressed, oh well...I’ll think about it later.

I thought you might get a hoot out of this most recent photo of myself (self portrait by the artist lol). It is so typical. In most photos I am headless, or just a hand, or most likely behind the camera.

May you have a fulfilling New Year,

Bye for now,

Delores.

Squinty McGuinty

2012-01-25T20:06:00.001-05:00

When I'm sitting here blogging? This is how I look.

"Aren't I attractive?" I ask Dave.

"No," sez Dave.

My one eye is SO BAD that I catch myself closing it tight, slamming it shut, anything to look at this damnably blurry computer screen. (You should see how big I've got it blown up. And I can only stand looking at it for a few minutes at a time.) Thirteen more days until my cataract surgery. 13 DAYS! I can hardly WAIT for that doctor to poke a hole in my eyeball with a scalpel, mash the lens around before he yanks it out, and stick the new bendable umbrella-ish lens through the hole. Then he'll stitch it up with a needle and thread. Like stuffing a Christmas goose. The idea of having stitches in my eyes is a little daunting but I am definitely looking forward to seeing again.

It's not that I can't see. I just can't see details. It's like looking through a window that's clouded up. Like, when you've been out at Make-out Hill necking in the back of your boyfriend's Buick and there's a knock on the window and you're not sure if it's a cop or a serial killer because you've steamed up the glass. Here, I found this image on the web that shows you what I mean:

(It's from Lighthouse International.)

Anyway, I'm getting sick and tired of squinting at everything. I was at the hairdresser's today, getting my eyebrows plucked because I sure as hell can't see them (I now wear make-up like 90-year-old ladies wear make-up, with blue shadow over half my face and lipstick smeared up my nose. I know. Disgusting). The hairdressing ladies were teasing me that after the surgery I'll know what Dave REALLY looks like. (God, I hope he's cute. Word to the wise: never marry someone BEFORE cataract surgery.)

I found out tonight, on Facebook, because everything I know about my family I learned on Facebook (pretty soon we won't need family reunions, we'll just set up a FB event and nuke our own hot dogs), that my cousin Karen just found out SHE has cataracts. And she's younger than me! Poor thing, she just had surgery for glaucoma (the eye disease I can never pronounce) and she went in for a post-op check-up and the doc says, "Your glaucoma is gone but keep an eye on those cataracts you got going." Talk about not winning for losing! Hey Karen - I'll loan ya my white cane when I'm done with it! And then we'll go and beat up on our mothers for handing us down the blind gene!

Speaking of mothers, I had lunch with mine today. She paid, which was AWESOME. We went to the hairdresser's. Mom got herself a fancy new do and she looks like a million bucks. Seeing as how I'm usually at work when my Mom is gallivanting, this was a real treat. We had coffee and gossiped and chatted and ate and gossiped and, you know, it was just fabulous! Thanks Mom!

On a different note, I'm pretty stoked about how Letters from a Friend is going. Hope you're liking it, too. I love how every letter is different. I love all your comments. Some of them make me laugh. Some cry. All of 'em make me squint. Oh, didn't you love Jamie Woodman's handcrafted letter? She is SO talented. Me and her and Dave and Donna Brohm had a helluva good time having coffee at her house on Monday. Nothing better than seeing old friends. I got there and announced, truthfully, "You guys haven't changed a bit! You look amazing!" And they were, like, "Says the blind girl." Yeah. Well. I bet they looked fetching. They always did. Likely always will.

I've got lots more letters coming up. Tomorrow I'll be posting a letter from Delores of The Feathered Nest fame. She is one of my most faithful blog readers – I've gotta give her credit for that. Even when I post the worst shite, she is there to cheer me on. Delores is also one of the most prolific bloggers I've come across – she posts like a zillion times every day. OK, so maybe not a zillion, but ALMOST. (Gotta stop writing about her now so I have lots to discuss tomorrow.)

I've got letters from some of my very favourite blogger friends. You won't want to miss them, I swear.

One more thing: we went cross-country skiing on Sunday. There's a spot around the corner from us where you can ski-for-free. It was gorgeous and we had an awesome time. I am NOT a great skier anymore, since I got old and fat and all, but I used to be, when dinosaurs roamed the earth. I was feeling brave until I went down the first hill, yelling, "SHIT! SHIT! SHIT!" all the way.

Next hill, I took off the damned skis and walked.

I may be blind but I'm not stupid.

Remind me to buy Sam some snow pants.

Sue Harding – Letter from a Friend

2012-01-24T11:00:00.000-05:00

Oh Sue. You're so much like me it isn't even funny. You and me could form our own Writer's Angst group only we'd have to arm wrestle over who was gonna be club president because we're both equally unsure of our talents as writers.

Say hello to Sue Harding, everyone. Sue, this is everyone. Just about every one of the four people (!) who read this blog are also card-carrying members of the writer's-angst-society of those who feel the need – deep down in the bowels of their souls – to put words on a page and yet we all berate ourselves with the notion that we don't deserve the title "author." That our work isn't good enough. That we're fooling ourselves if we think otherwise.

Sue is a very talented writer. She needs to know this. She needs some encouragement to pick up that pen again and start writing. And Sue, please don't get mad at me for this – we all need encouragement along the line. Heck, I am extremely needy in this department. I can't even tell you how many people I have kicking me in my frozen white arse on a regular basis to keep writing. I feel like I'm a sled dog and all my writer friends are in the sled with the reins and they're yelling, "MUSH, MUSH, MUSH!"

Sue's a retired librarian. She's an avid reader and a rabid knitter. She's a wife and a mom to two grown kids who need her now more than ever. She lives somewhere in the U.K. and I imagine her to have a lilting accent that would absolutely charm the bejeebers out of me. She is kind and she is encouraging. She thought she was going to be able to participate in National Novel Writing Month and we were going to be writing buddies but her busy, busy life put a kibosh on her own involvement – still, she managed to send me much appreciated words of encouragement along the way.

Sue is one of my Friday Flash friends, one of the small circle of talented writers I have somehow glommed onto. They're the best people – my friends in every sense of the word. Sue lives so far away that unless I win a lottery it's unlikely I'll ever make it over the pond for a visit. Still, she's on my bucket list of folks I'd like to have tea with. Maybe even a scone with a nice pot of jam and butter. Because if it's a bucket list, who cares about calories?

Dear Cathy:

We’ve known each other for a while now, keeping up with each other’s lives in snippets and snaps, via Twitter and blogs but as we can’t exactly pull up a chair and have a cup of tea and a natter, given the vast geographical distance between us, perhaps a letter will have to do for now!

Just how long have we known each other? It seems like for ever, but in reality it can have only been a couple of years at most. I ‘blame’ that Alan Davidson – I’m pretty certain I first noticed your name whilst I was reading his blog. But perhaps ‘blame’ is a bad choice of word – after all, it was only through reading his work and then being nosey enough to trawl through to yours that I found your blog and came to know a little about you and what makes you tick. Incidentally, the family photo on your blog always makes me smile!

I’ll always remember the first comments you made on my blog, responding to some flash fiction I’d written. What a breath of fresh air and encouragement – I swear I could hear a chuckle in your ‘voice’!

Writing has been an on-going pursuit, right from way back in school. That’s not to say I’ve stayed true to it since then, it sort of comes and goes in cycles. There have been a number of times I’ve grown disillusioned with it and I don’t know how many novels (finished and WIPs) that have been discarded in mad purges over the years when my ‘sensible’ head convinced me that I’d never get published so what was the point!

Well, setting up a blog a few years ago gave me a platform to display my wares, so to speak. However, it was a while before I took the plunge and was brave enough to let anyone actually see what I’d written. Thanks to encouragement from people like Matt Hilton and David Barber (and you, madam!) I began to investigate different online writing groups – and what a diverse bunch I found!

Meanwhile I plugged away with a couple of novel-length pieces, hawking them round various agencies…..but I think I am resigned to never getting anything published, having lived through the process vicariously as other writing buddies had their hopes repeatedly raised and then dashed.

But, hey – life’s too short…!

In fact, at the moment my life is seriously far too busy for the single-minded obsession of writing, anyway. Don’t get me wrong, I love my kids, but just as the nest emptied and I got used to time and space that hadn’t been there for so long, back come the fledglings, along with their problems and their needs (and their furniture!) and I’m back into Mum-mode.

Even though I’ve now given up my job in the library (and just as well, as far as coping with the family issues are concerned!) my life is still very firmly entrenched in the world of books – though rather more reading them than writing them, for the time being.

So, now, (in between being nurse-maid, cat wrangler, general housekeeper and library-runner for my daughter recovering from major eye surgery, whilst also being counsellor, soundboard and ‘spirit-buoyancy’ mentor to my currently unemployed son) the few treasured moments to myself are often occupied with reading or knitting – or both at the same time! (a multi-tasking action achieved with the discovery of a book-easel!)

My husband laughs as I knit away regardless – he once said I should have needles surgically implanted – but it is a great stress reliever, and I often find myself weaving plots and arguing the merits of proposed characters as I knit1, purl 1, pass slipped stitch over……

Besides, the wonderful David Barber once dubbed me the ‘Knitting Assassin’ as needles and wool occasionally drifted into my stories – it is a moniker I have adopted for my identity on certain forums, and even the title of a sister-blog I set up.

Well, that’s all for now, dear; if I’m quick I can snatch a couple more chapters and another few rows….given the financial recession, if ever I can’t afford the heating bills I can always wrap myself in wool and lose myself in a good book!

Bye for now!

Regards, Sue

You can check out Sue Harding's work in three places on the web:

http://www.irefusetogoquietly.blogspot.com/

http://knittingassassin.blogspot.com/

http://onesmallcogwheel.blogspot.com/

Jamie Woodman - Letter from a Friend

2012-01-23T08:48:00.000-05:00

This came in the mail on Friday. Can you believe it? Look at all those letters. Look at those beads – hand-sewn! And the carefully folded fan ... and the fuzzy "hair" ... not to mention the sprightly handwriting. How incredibly creative. How thoughtful. How "Jamie."

Jamie Woodman is one of the most talented people I know. We worked together for a number of truly satisfying years at an independently-owned community newspaper called The Haliburton County Echo. I started out in the editorial department as a reporter/photographer but gradually weaseled my way into the production department where Jamie produced award-winning ads and lay-outs. When I say award-winning, I'm not kidding. Back then the Echo was the newspaper to beat all across Canada. It won more awards than any other community newspaper. And that was crazy because Haliburton is a tiny village, a two-traffic light town, a speck! It still doesn't even have a Tim Horton's, that's how small it is! Somehow, this miniature village hugging the scenic shore of Head Lake attracted some of the finest newspaper talent in this country. Everyone who worked there was talented, driven and dedicated. Part of it was due to the leadership of Editor Martha Perkins, a powerhouse writer and editor and a dear friend. But part of it was definitely Jamie. She gave the paper its "look." She gave it soul. Whenever anybody needed an idea, Jamie was the one to ask for help. Her mind was like a virtual Fort Knox of ideas.

Good things don't last forever, unfortunately. Publisher Len Pizzey retired from the business and sold the Echo to a big company that promptly tore it apart. One of the first orders of business was firing all the production staff, including Jamie, and sending its ad work to be done in India. It might have saved a bit of money, sending work overseas (nobody at the Echo was well paid, I can attest to that), but what it might have saved in money, it lost in quality, originality and heart. The paper went downhill like an Acapulco truck driver. People in the community that once loved the Echo were now up in arms about it. A new newspaper was started and it became increasingly popular to the point that I would say the once mighty Echo is now a struggling underdog.

It makes me sad, a little bit, to see the state the Echo is in. But the newspaper I once knew and loved is nothing but a distant memory. It was a place I loved to go to, every single day. The office was in an old house overlooking the lake. The walls of the production room were painted a peaceful turquoise hue and trimmed with beautiful original wood. The big windows facing the lake were old and imperfect and gorgeous. I'd get there, and say good morning to everyone. Jamie was already there, wearing her warm wooly socks and her Birkenstocks, eating porridge or some godawful healthy crap. The radio was playing Canoe FM or CBC, and the other production team members were already hard at work, churning out amazing ads and making each other laugh.

How we used to laugh. One of the other women who worked with us, Donna Brohm, oh, she was a spitfire and a shit disturber and one of the funniest people I'd ever met. Sometimes she had me laughing so hard that I could barely breathe. That's what I loved the most about that place. The laughter. The creative energy. We all felt like we were part of a team and I didn't realize how incredibly special that was until it was gone.

It's been years since Jamie and I worked together. Like all friends separated by distance and time, we don't see each other much.

Today Dave's driving me to Haliburton. I have a doctor's appointment – a pre-op before my cataract surgery. After the appointment, we're going for coffee at Jamie's house. I think Donna's going to be there, too. I can hardly wait.

I wonder if Jamie's still wearing her Birks.

I wonder if Donna is gonna make me laugh until my stomach hurts.

I don't wonder at all about how much I miss them.

Laura Eno - Letter from a Friend

2012-01-21T11:00:00.001-05:00

An enigma? I think she is.

For as much as Laura Eno is open and active on Facebook, Twitter and her own blog, A Shift in Dimensions, there's still a bit of mystery swirling around her like the salt-laden ocean mists that must sometimes hide her Florida home.

In fact, when the idea for Letter from a Friend first came to me, it was Laura I was thinking of. There's something about her that brings out the reporter in me. I would dearly love to throw a Barbara Walters on her. Just sit down for a few hours and pour on the hard questions and see what what makes this driven author tick.

Driven. It's as good a word as any for someone who has been rolling out book after book after book. She has published three or four while I have been struggling to finish one. Her works include Raven, Book 1 of the Carriena Oracles, a Sci/Fi Romance novella; My Enchanted Life, a YA fantasy; Stone of Destiny, an erotic romance; Deadly Intent, a horror/thriller; Tempest Child, a YA romantic fantasy; Don't Fall Asleep, A Dream Assassin Novel; Prophecy Moon; Seducer of Her Dreams; Realms of the Red Rabbit, Book One; and Realms of the Red Rabbit-Jake, Book Two. (You can read more about her many wonderful books here.)

I often ask what her secret is but I know the answer: hard work. Dedication. The ability to strap your butt to the chair and get the work done. I can't even begin to tell you how hard that is and I am a big fan of Laura's, not just for the amazing work itself but for her uncanny ability to do it at all.

Laura is probably one of the biggest cheerleaders in my internet circle. She always has a kind word for even the most angst-ridden writer and I've come to think of her as a den mother for Friday Flash and a friend to all who cross her talented path. Her letter to me is funny and sweet and touching, especially the part about her grandchildren, but it still doesn't dig deep enough for my liking. She didn't even want her photo taken but I talked her into it because, she's right, I'm a pushy broad. (That's her dog's tail she's using as a boa!)

Despite my best efforts, Laura Eno continues to be an enigma – one of the nicest enigmas I've never met.

Hi Cathy,

I hope you're doing well and are busy working on your novel. With your talent, I'm sure it will be a big hit and I can't wait to read it!

Jezebel asked me to say hi and to tell you how much she enjoyed coordinating your wedding reception. (Humor her, okay?) She'd like to visit you again. Perhaps if you could clear up that little misunderstanding with the Canadian police, they'd let her cross the border again?

I know you've been bugging me for a recent picture of myself. Well, the truth is I took one but the cat…er, dog ate it…anyway, I need a few more months to correct my temporary insanity. I don't look good with red hair but the ruby color on the box looked so pretty…

This past Christmas was a forlorn time for me, as last spring my daughter and her family moved from Florida to Arizona. Not having the four grandkids around takes the fun out of the holidays.

I also have a new granddaughter from my son! I haven't seen her in person yet, since they live in Outer Mongolia—or somewhere closer to you—kinda the same thing, you know?

On a brighter note, I'm trying to train my two dogs to alert me when I've overfilled the pool—again! You know, like Lassie. Bark, bark "Timmy's stuck in the well?" So far, I haven't had any success with it but my lawn is green from the overflow.

Say hi to Dave and the boys for me and remember about Jezebel's request. She has a tentacle wrapped around my throat right now, making me remind you again.

Stay in touch!

Laura

Helen Howell - Letter from a Friend

2012-01-19T08:04:00.000-05:00

If there's anybody I'd like to have for tea it's Helen A. Howell.

She has such a lovely, calming, creative presence in my internet world that I just want to reach out and give her a squeeze. It would be a long reach, however. Helen lives in Australia. I live in Canada. It's summertime for her right now, while I'm socked in under January snow. She gets parrots at her birdfeeder. PARROTS! Can you imagine? I get chickadees. We're about as opposite as opposites get but, like all my internet friends, distance and differences dissolve in a melting pot of writerly like-mindedness.

Helen is one of my Friday Flash friends (try saying that three times fast). I started writing flash stories two years ago – I can honestly say it was a pivotal moment in my life. Not only did I discover the joy of writing fiction, I also discovered a circle of people who would become as familiar to me as real-life friends and family. From comments on each other's stories, to chatting on Facebook and Twitter, these folks are on a first name basis with me. All I have to say is, "I was talking to Lou," or, "I got an e-mail from Linda," and my husband knows who I'm talking about. Helen is one of these special people.

Recognize this? ^_^ It's practically Helen's trademark. She sprinkles it everywhere, in her Facebook comments, on her blog, in her letters – it's like a little happy face breadcrumb and if you follow it you will find one of the loveliest, cheeriest, most creative people in this great big world – my friend, Helen.

10th January 2012

My Dear Friend,

Well, here I am on a dull day in January, when it’s supposed to be our summer, yet grey clouds are thrown carelessly across the sky like a discarded blanket. As I look out the window of my office, I see my darling little bird feeding table. It’s in the shape of a house, white roof and red body; it’s always alive with the comings and goings of the feathered kind. I do love my garden and the time I spend in it—an oasis in a busy world.

A lot of my days are spent at the keyboard, penning in the modern way my ideas for stories. I‘ve nearly finished the last lot of edits to my novel. Did I tell you that when I first started writing three and half years ago I jumped in the deep end? Oh yes, I jumped straight in and wrote a novel—a fantasy fiction for children from eight years upwards—it took me twelve months. It is this novel that I am finally polishing.
I began fiction writing at the age of fifty-six and half . I never thought that I could be a writer, let alone write a novel. Yet when I unleashed my imagination, gave it free rein, it surprised me at what I could accomplish. They say the pen is mightier than sword don’t they? It is how one uses those words that creates joy or unhappiness. Words have such strength don’t they? They achieved so much. The thrill of a story; the excitement of an adventure, the sadness of a loss, the cut of a knife. I hope the words I have created in the last three and half years have entertained and brought a smile to the lips of those who read me, or a gasp as I attempt to thrill and chill.

I’ve always been creative and as a child I use to play theatre with my friends. We’d set up a mock stage and perform for anyone willing to watch. Then like all small girls I took ballet classes—little did I know that I would go on to be a ballet teacher. At the age of fifteen I even won a choreography competition, where I also designed the costumes for the dance I created. Such a long time ago now, it almost seems like it was another life.

In my late thirties I took up watercolour painting. I loved the feel of being able to create pictures with the stroke of a brush . I guess I was more impressionist than realist and I went on to follow that pursuit for over 18 years and exhibiting my work at various art shows. Painting, I think, is a lot like writing. You start with a blank piece of paper, it holds so much potential, promise and as you make the first stroke the picture begins to reveal itself. One is pulling together a vision and transforming it into a reality. In my 'about me' on my writing blog, I wrote: “Writing for me is like painting pictures with words. It is an expression of thought, feeling and imagination all drawn together to form one glorious vision of an initial idea.”

Now having recounted my creative endeavours from early childhood onwards, I wonder why I thought I could never write?

There is one thing I would also loved to have been able to do—sing. Yes, of course I can sing, but not necessarily in tune! I marvel at those who possess amazing voices and think it would be so splendid to have been one of them. Nevertheless, I have been blessed with certain gifts of creativity and I should not discount those things that I can achieve.

Oh I don’t think that I ever mentioned to you that I use to read tarot professionally — Madam Helen delves into the future - well stumbles around a bit ^_^. I say use to, because late last year I retired from professional reading and also as the co-author of the blog Tarot Notes Major and Minor—my ex tarot partner now runs it herself. I have had a love of tarot that spans thirty plus years, and I never cease to be amazed at how these little pieces of cardboard can get to the root of a problem. Is it the cards or is it the reader that holds the magic? I’ll leave you to decide that one.

Oh look, I’ve babbled on for such a long time, but I do hope that you will have enjoyed reading this and perhaps feel that you have got to know me just a little better. Right, back to those edits or that book will never be finished!

With fondest regards,

Helen A. Howell

On Strike

2012-01-18T08:24:00.000-05:00

http://sopastrike.com/strike/

Driving Miss Cathy

2012-01-17T08:41:00.002-05:00

Weird, today is. My last morning going to work for almost a month.

It's my eyes, you see. Can't see a bloody thing. Well, I can see you but I can't see the expression on your face. I can't see road signs anymore – they're just a dangerous blur. And I definitely can't see what's on my computer screen, no matter how big I blow it up.

Cataracts. In both eyes. I'm 51, for crissakes. Who gets cataracts when they're 51? Actually my uncle was still in his '40s when he had his done, so it runs in my family and it's not unheard of. Still, my husband's aunt, who is in her '80s, just had hers done.

I figured something was amiss last spring but I didn't suspect cataracts. I just thought my glasses were FUBAR and my prescription had changed. You could have blown me over with a feather when the optometrist said, "You have cataracts in both eyes and they're the fast-growing kind. I want to keep close tabs on them. Come back and see me in six months."

"I'm old," I whined. "It's official."

It was apparent to the optometrist that my cataracts had gotten substantially worse when I went back for the six month check-up. There was none of the debate I expected: "Well, they're bad but you can probably wait for a couple of years." Nope. She said, "Let's get you in to see a surgeon as soon as possible."

That was in September. Now, Canada has an excellent health plan but non-emergency surgery does take time to arrange. First the doc has to find room on his schedule for a consult. Then there are tests and more tests, blah-dee-blah. Finally I got a date for surgery – Feb. 7.

Meanwhile, my eyes are rapidly getting worse. It's a good thing I'm a touch-typist because otherwise I wouldn't know what I was writing. (And thank gawd for spell check and blowing up your screen 200%.) Part of my job is adjusting photographs at work. Usually I'm pretty good at it – my colleagues often give me the worst photos that need the most touch-ups. Funny thing is, I can't see what I'm doing at all. Only a bazillion years of experience tells me I'm in the ballpark.

We got a 50" plasma TV before Christmas (I know, crazy eh?) and I keep asking Dave, "Is it clear?" Because it looks terrible to me. He assures me it's fantastic.

I rely on other people to drive me everywhere.

I can't read labels at the supermarket.

Finally I decided, enough is fecking enough. So I arranged to be off on short-term disability until after my surgery.

I feel kind of icky about it. Guilty. But also vaguely exhilarated. I mean, come on, the last time I had a month off was when I had my babies. This time there's no labour pains and diapers to change.

Anyway, I should go. My ride will show up any minute to drive Miss Daisy to work. She's no Morgan Freeman but I surely do appreciate her kindness.

Mark Champion - Letter from a Friend

2012-01-14T07:04:00.000-05:00

It all started because Mrs. Sunshine cut her finger off while trimming a hedge.

I looked out the window of the bungalow my family had just moved into and there was a swarm of children combing through the hedge separating our house from the Sunshines.

"We're looking for the finger!" they said. I helped them with their enthusiastic search, hoping I'd be the one to find the bloody appendage and at the same time hoping I wouldn't because, ew, it was totally gross.

No one found the finger (turns out it was just a fingertip, not the whole enchilada) but I did find a lifelong friend. Mark Champion's house was kitty corner across the street. He was my age (only a month apart), he looked like me (people thought we were brother and sister) and we got along like gangbusters.

He was the best kind of best friend. Loyal. Caring. Intelligent. Funny. We walked to school together and argued about politics, we played Kick the Can until the streetlights came on, we made prank phone calls to people asking if their refrigerators were running ("you better run and catch them, then"). The only time we were apart was summer, when our family went up north to the cottage. There were no cell phones back then. No internet. The only way to keep in touch was through letter-writing. Mark was a faithful and avid letter writer, sending me many and getting mad when I didn't reply as often as he thought I should. I loved getting those letters. He sent them on fish-covered stationery and addressed them to the general delivery post office closest to our cottage.

Our parents used to think that we'd grow up and get married but it wasn't like that. We grew up alright, but our lives went separate ways even as they followed parallel paths. I got married, he got married. I got pregnant, his wife got pregnant a few months later. I had two boys, they had two girls. I got divorced, he got divorced. But through it all we hardly saw each other. I was a country bumpkin at heart and felt happiest up north. Mark was happy in the city. I was basically content with low paying newspaper jobs. Mark climbed the corporate ladder. After a while it was hard to believe we ever had anything in common – we seemed so different.

When I decided to run this Letters from a Friend series, I knew I couldn't do it without asking for a letter from Mark. He inspired this series, his letters.

His e-mail arrived in my inbox while I was at work. I opened it and gawd if I didn't start bawling like a baby. Hard, ugly sobbing. People asked what the hell was wrong with me. "Nothing," I said, "I just got a letter from a friend."

His letter, as you're about to see, is deeply personal and incredibly brave. Not everyone is willing to share this kind of introspection. It is a sign of a brave and sensitive man.

What makes it even more special is he enclosed a picture of a gold coloured fish and addressed the letter as if it were the mid-1970s again and he was sending it to the cottage. That's what started the tears – but it was his revelations about his own life that really made the waterworks flow. If you ever receive a letter like this, you are a lucky, lucky person. If you ever have a friend like Mark, you're even luckier.

Oh, and if you're wondering who Cathy Robb is? That's my maiden name. God knows, it's easy to be confused. I've had almost as many names as Elizabeth Taylor. But enough about me – here is Mark's magnificent letter.

Cathy Robb

General Delivery

Carnarvon, ON

Hey Cathy:

I’ve been waiting so long for your reply to my last letter. It hardly seems reasonable to ask what’s new, when the answer is a lifetime.

I am starting this letter at work, and trying to think while the Hackasaurus in the next cube mists us with her latest virus. Let’s call her Misty. Misty who missed her flu shot. Misty who hasn’t missed a day’s work in 16 years. Fuck you, Misty.

Fortunately I have a singleton cube and don’t have to share with Misty. As luxurious as that may sound it’s a big step down from my last position where I enjoyed the divine isolation of a corner suite in an office at the corner of University & Dundas. My former office could have housed 8 of my current cubes and had a door to lock out the parasitic droplets dispersed by the likes of Misty. Times change. Careers tumble. I’ve changed a bit, Cathy.

Aside from the likely things like larger, grayer and more wrinkly, I’m less stylish. Somewhere along the way my new frugality and limited shopping schedule has resulted in me looking at clothes as less of a way to ornament myself and more of a way to shield the world from my nakedness. I shop for the kids constantly, but when I shop for me I try to find something of quality at a bargain … or when my bargain priced quality items have given up the ghost from constant wear … I resort to the clothing section of the grocery store where the clothes are so cheap I don’t even bother to try them on. If they don’t suit they can always become a dish rag. In so doing I become what most women expect their husbands would be if they weren’t around to dress them. Even my old, nearly blind, bedridden mother has offered to buy me clothes.

Yet, while I might like to spruce myself up a bit, I don’t think I’d change where I am at. Somehow I had found myself wearing a corporate ladder, a Volvo, 2700 Sq Feet and a Swimming Pool and it obscured some of the things that you might have known me to be. I think I am more myself today, Cathy… I think I may be more myself than I was before. I’m more patient, more laid back. I am certainly more liberal which I think is unusual in a man crossing 50. I am less interested in things and more interested in people and experiences. I am less inclined to desire luxury and more in search of the unique and the authentic, the intimate … the things that enrich us instead of the riches. I like that I have put the kids first in my life. I like that we have a dog and two cats. I like watching the kids grow, even the painful parts. I like getting to know them and sharing experiences with them. I’m happy to replace the day to day excess with some time.

Take care Cathy, dear friend, I hope to hear from you soon.

With love,

Mark

Laurita Miller - Letter from a Friend

2012-01-12T06:26:00.003-05:00

Laurita Miller - bundled up because baby, it's cold outside.

I was having a bad day. In the throes of getting a chest cold, exhausted from a four hour car ride and a weekend of winter camping, emotional because I was picking on that lovely husband of mine, for absolutely no reason, I wasn't in the best of shape, to be sure. Then I opened up my laptop and saw I had a letter from a friend.

I opened it eagerly and didn't even read it all the way through before I started sobbing like an idjit. The idea of Laurita Miller, visiting her beloved homestead, was so beautiful, so simple and yet so vivid, that I was overcome.

Maybe it helps to know how ingrained rural Newfoundland is to someone like Laurita; maybe it helps to know Laurita a little bit. Because, to me, she is a poster child for everything that is warm and wonderful about 'The Rock.' We met in the fall of 2010. Dave and I were on our honeymoon. He'd barely been out of Ontario before. I'd never been to Newfoundland. We wanted to go somewhere neither of us had ever been, and we wanted to explore more of Canada. We also wanted to meet two of my favourite blogging buddies, Alan W. Davidson and Laurita Miller.

We had the best day imaginable. Alan and Laurita are truly good people. The best – and I don't say that lightly. You just don't meet up with folks like them often. When you do, you realize what treasures they are, and how lucky you are to have come across them.

Laurita is thoughtfully intelligent, funny and sassy, warm and generous. She shaved her head to raise money to fight cancer. She is deeply involved in her children's lives. She loves her husband fiercely, like she married him yesterday. Family, I think, is more than just a word to Laurita. It's everything, as important to her as breathing. I'm just guessing, when I say that – I know, pretty presumptuous. But I do believe it's true.

Laurita lives in a suburban environment near St. John's, the capital of Newfoundland, but she was raised in the countryside, next to the ocean, and salt and honest Newfoundland spirit runs thick in her veins.

My father was a railroad engineer and we moved several times in my young life, to the point that I don't really know where my hometown is. I don't feel any kinship to any particular place. Laurita knows exactly where she's from. And when she writes about it, my heart sings.

Laurita Miller is one of the finest writers I know. Her blog, Calling Shotgun, is one of my favourite haunts. Some day, mark my words, she will be famous. I can hardly wait to say I knew her when.

I am so honoured to share her letter with you.

Dear Cathy:

I hope this letter finds you well and making fantastic progress on that novel of yours. I can’t wait to read what you’ve done.

Things are quieting down here after the holidays. The kids are back to school and I think I’ve finally managed to eradicate all the glitter from the house. That stuff gets everywhere.

I hopped in my car today, taking advantage of the lull, to go check on my old homestead. After all the craziness, I needed the break. I love the drive, though it takes over an hour to get here. It’s relaxing to travel a road that’s so familiar.

The first thing I did was take a walk around the house, through the garden and the woods, checked the barn and filled all the birdfeeders. The pond was well frozen and, once I made sure no one was watching, I had a little slide around. I ended up on my behind more than once, so I’m glad there was no one to see.

It was one of those damp days, where the cold just seeps into your bones, so I lit the fireplace as soon as I went inside. The wind was up by then, and from the window I could see the whitecaps on the water. White horses on the harbour, my grandfather would call them. I always loved that saying. Newfoundland is a bleak place in the winter, but I think it might just be my favourite time. Sitting there, warm in my old home, looking out at the wind and water – can you think of a better way to spend some quiet time?

There’s also something very comforting about sleeping in my old room. I loved waking up in that room, to the sound of the birds in the trees outside, the boats in the harbour, and that stupid, clumsy seagull who would land on the roof – whump – and then run the whole length of the house – thump, thump, thump, thump.

Tonight I’ll walk down the harbour and visit my aunt and my grandfather, sit in that nice warm kitchen for a cup of tea and a chat. Then tomorrow I’ll head back over that familiar road to my house in Chaos Town. Maybe I’m a glutton for punishment, but I start to miss the madness after a bit.

I hope you come visit me again someday. I would love to take you to all these places, but maybe in the summer when the temperatures and landscape are a little more friendly.

Take care, my friend. I look forward to chatting again soon. Give my best to all your boys.

Laurita

Letter from a Friend

2012-01-11T08:19:00.000-05:00

Dear Friend: How are you? I am fine ...

Remember getting a letter from a friend?

I do.

A fortunate child, in every respect, I spent every summer during the 1970s at our cottage in the Haliburton Highlands. Long days in the water, baking in the sun, no worries in our pert wee heads, except missing our friends from back home. There were no computers back then, no crackberries. For the longest time we didn't even have a telephone at the cottage (heck, we didn't even have indoor plumbing) and, when we finally did get a party line put in, my father would have strung me up if I used it to make long distance calls to my friends.

The only way to keep in touch was through letter-writing and my heart always did a happy jump when a trip to the post office garnered me a letter from a friend. My good friend Mark must have have gotten a deal on gold-coloured fish stationery because his envelopes were always decorated with embossed fishies. Even better, he wrote conversation bubbles coming from their fishy lips, usually berating me for not writing more often.

I've been thinking for a while about running a series of articles about the blogging friends who have had a big impact on me. There are many and they're all different but they all have encouraged me in some way, or inspired me, or offered me their friendship and I dearly love them all. At first I was thinking of questions and answers or maybe something akin to my American Weeks series from a couple of years ago. I got all wuzzy and sentimental, thinking how I could honour these folks and, when I got sentimental, I remembered the sweet charm of receiving an old-fashioned letter from a friend.

In that spirit, I have asked my blogging buddies to write me a letter. I haven't asked them for anything specific because I'm hoping all of them will be different and wonderful in their own ways. I have also asked them to take a new photo of themselves, nothing professional, just something that reflects who they are in this letter.

I haven't gotten around to asking everyone yet (I am not that organized, believe me) and there's nothing formal about the process. Like a letter from a friend, you never know when one is going to pop in your mailbox.

I'll post their letters intermittently in the next few weeks, starting tomorrow with Laurita Miller, one of my dearest blogging friends and an accomplished writer, who I had the pleasure of meeting in the fall of 2010. Her letter made me laugh and it made me cry. It told me a little bit about what's going on in her life and what's going on in her head. I can hardly wait to share it with you.

Till tomorrow, then.

Love,

Cathy oxo

Songs I want played at my funeral

2012-01-10T20:26:00.000-05:00

Danke Schoen by Wayne Newton

I Feel Pretty from West Side Story

Canadian Railroad Trilogy and almost anything else by Gordon Lightfoot, except the Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald because, really, do I want a song about a lake freighter played over my corpse?

Say A Little Prayer by Dionne Warwick

America by Simon & Garfunkel

You've Got a Friend by James Taylor

There's more. But I can't think of any right now.

What would you like played at your funeral?

Yogurt in a Yurt

2012-01-09T08:23:00.000-05:00

This past weekend Dave and I drove four hours north to Killarney Provincial Park. Our quest? To go winter camping in a yurt. What, you may well ask, is a yurt? To me it sounds just like yogurt, or something you might pick up at IKEA, but a yurt is a slightly more permanent version of a tent. The ones in Killarney and in Algonquin parks are insulated and come equipped with an electric heater and lights. So no big roughing it, sleep-wise. Bathroom-wise was another story. The nearest outhouse was a quarter of a mile away. When it's cold outside, you want to make sure you really have to go to the bathroom before you venture to the outhouse. If you're like me, cold air makes you want to pee all the more so, technically, you could walk a quarter mile to the outhouse, pee, walk back and realize you have to pee again, walk back to the outhouse, pee, walk... well, you get the idea. The best thing I brought along was a pee pot – more valuable than gold when your bladder is full to burst in the middle of the night.

This is Mohawk. He was a regular visitor at our campsite, chattering our ears and giving us crap as red squirrels are wont to do. Dave nicknamed him Mohawk because of his weird tail. It looks like he had it cut and dyed at one of those metalhead smoke shops downtown. Not that I would know anything about such shops.

The yurt came with several amenities including a barbecue, electrical outlets and mattresses but, alas, it didn't come with a dishwasher. Luckily I brought my own - the Super Duty Dave. See the toboggan in the background? That's how we hauled all our gear from the parking lot to the yurt, a distance of about three-quarters of a mile (the park roads are closed in winter so you have to hoof it.) That wouldn't be too far if it was flat ground but flat it wasn't – there was a mighty big hill up to climb and I was out of puff just bringing the crap in and out.

There wasn't a lot of snow in Killarney (the lady who works in the park office says they don't get much, for some reason) but there was enough to strap on the cross-country skis and give it a whirl. And here I thought I was in shape.... pffft! My legs are still killing me from a few hours out on the trail. Why do I keep thinking I'm 25?????

Handsome hunkaroo husband extraordinaire out on the trails. He does improve the scenery, don't you think? We saw a ton of animal tracks while we were out and about: white-tailed deer, marten, otter, fox, partridge, wolf or coyote, and plenty of red squirrel. Deer tracks were everywhere but we never did spot one. They're like ghosts in the forest; or statues. So hard to see. But they were watching us – a half an hour after we passed one area, we returned to see fresh deer tracks on top of our ski tracks.

Our yurt! Isn't it cute?

A little fuzzy, but I thought you might want to see inside. Bunk beds, plastic chairs, plastic tables, a heater and a shelf. That's it! And, I've gotta say, the yurts aren't cheap: two nights cost nearly 200 bucks. For that kind of money you could get a nice hotel room for the weekend – one with an indoor pool, a jacuzzi and an inside toilet!

Dave eating yogurt in the yurt. For some reason we thought we were just hilarious saying that. That's my coffeemaker I dragged along on the toboggan. I brought a fancy coffee for the excursion. Muskoka Roastery's maple flavour. Yum-o.

We also did a lot of reading on our Kindles. Dave was reading Quick and the Dead by Louis L'Amour and I thoroughly enjoyed Blood and Fire, the cool new offering from Carrie Clevenger and Nerine Dorman. I flew through that puppy. It was almost as delicious as my coffee, and that's saying something! Carrie has promised me an interview with her lead character, vampire Xan Marcelles, in the near future. So stay tuned... Speaking of reading, I want to thank everyone who read my Friday Flash last week. It was the first one I wrote for ages. I had been talking to Carrie and she was saying how much she missed the Friday Flash crew, being such a busy novelist now. I realized I missed it too, so sat down and wrote Funeral Sandwiches. I didn't get a chance to read other people's flash because we were internet-less in the yurt, but I will this week, I promise. I also have something exciting planned - Letters from a Friend, a series of letters from some of the bloggers who have had the biggest impact on me. I've received the first one from Laurita Miller and it is FABULOUS. Brought me to tears, it did. I can hardly wait to share it with you. For now, I'm off to work. Happy Monday, everyone!

Funeral Sandwiches - #fridayflash

2012-01-05T22:34:00.001-05:00

"Was she really religious? I didn't think she was all that religious."

Cameron twisted her black leather gloves in her winter-dry hands.

"I don't know," said her husband, eyes focused on the road ahead. It was starting to snow again. He loosened his tie with one hand, other hand on the wheel. His wedding ring gleamed in the afternoon light. "Put this in your purse, will you?"

She reached over behind the seats and grabbed her purse. It was heavy with her pocket-change laden wallet, reading glasses, lipstick that she never wore, gum, bills, pay stubs and a handful of peppermints that had escaped from their container two months ago and were now accumulating lint coats. Lifting the heavy purse and heaving it over the seats was always a bit of a chore. It made her feel like her arm was being wrenched out of its socket. She always said to Tom, before she put the purse in the back seat at the beginning of any car travel, "Is there anything in my purse you might need?" And he always replied, "Why would I need anything in your purse?" Ten minutes later, without fail, he would ask for a stick of gum, or an aspirin, or he wanted to put something in the purse. Like his tie.

She grunted a bit more than was necessary but she wrestled the purse into her lap without complaint. She took the tie, rolled it up into a perfectly round, perfectly garish red, white and blue ball, and slipped it into her purse. His mother had given him that tie last Christmas. It was horrid. She thought about accidentally tossing it out the window.

"Anything else you need from the purse?" she asked. "Gum? Asprin? Antacid? Cigars? Cigarettes? Coffee, tea or me?"

"No thanks," said Tom.

She started to put her purse in the back seat.

"Oh wait," he said. "Maybe I will have a Tums. That salmon sandwich I had at the lunch might have been a bit off."

She handed him a couple of antacids, then closed her purse. "I had the egg salad. It was good. Nothing beats those little triangle-shaped sandwiches they serve at funerals. Did you try any of the squares? Those oatmeal-rice crisp things were phenomenal. I wish I had of asked for the recipe. I was going to, but didn't have enough nerve. It was good, though. Those ladies at Christ Church always put on a nice lunch."

She left the purse in her lap, just in case Tom changed his mind.

"Why don't you put your purse in the back seat? It'll be more comfortable for you than having that big thing sitting in your lap."

Cameron made a wry face. "It's fine. Besides, you might need it."

"I won't need it. Why would I need it?"

She sighed, then lifted her purse over her head and into the back seat, wrenching her arm again in the process.

Her lap was now free of everything but her hands and her gloves.

"Now isn't that better?" he asked, throwing a smile her way.

"Oh yes. Much." She rubbed her shoulder in the spot where it throbbed the most.

They drove in quiet for a few moments. When Cameron stopped thinking about her shoulder and her purse, she returned to thoughts of Aunt Opal and how religious her funeral was. She never remembered Opal talking about religion, or going to church. There were no portraits of Jesus hanging in her room at the Whispering Pines Retirement Villa. There were no crucifixes on the wall. And yet there were three ministers at the funeral – three. And all of them took a turn at the podium saying what a good Christian woman Opal was, and how she was ready to meet her maker and cry tears of joy in the arms of her Lord.

"The way those ministers carried on you'd think Aunt Opal was excited about dying," Cameron said. "That's not the impression I got from talking to cousin Karen. She was right there with Aunt Opal when she died and I asked her if she went peacefully and Karen said yes, at the very end. But the last week was hard because she was scared."

Tom said, "Well that's understandable. I'd be scared if I was dying."

"Me too. But we're heathens. We're not believers, the way those ministers said Aunt Opal was a believer. If I truly believed that I was going to heaven when I died, real heaven with pearly gates and a choir of angels and no pain, just love and happiness in a never-ending palm-treed paradise, I wouldn't be scared. I'd be excited. Hell, I'd be positively thrilled.

"Poor Aunt Opal," she said. "Even at 97 years old, she was scared of dying. I would have thought that maybe, when you get to that age, you're more accepting of the inevitable."

Tom kept his eyes on the road, but he reached over with his right hand and rubbed his wife's sore shoulder. "This the spot that hurts?" he asked.

She smiled. "Yes."

Tom rubbed her shoulder. "I don't think," he said, "we ever stop wanting to live. I don't think we ever stop being scared, either. No matter how old we are. The best we can hope for is finding something to believe in, like Aunt Opal did, or tried to do. That and getting funeral sandwiches that won't give your guests food poisoning. Speaking of which, do you think I could bug you for another Tums?"

Cameron turned to look at her husband's face. She could see he was trying not to smile but not completely succeeding. "They're in my purse," she said.

"Your purse? Not the purse in the back seat, surely?"

"That," she said, "would be it. And I'm not reaching for it. I don't care how much that salmon you ate is swimming upstream."

He laughed. "You don't have to get your purse. I was kidding."

"I know," said Cameron. "But I'll get them if you really want."

"Nah," said Tom. "I don't. Just promise me, though, that there won't be any tainted salmon sandwiches at my funeral. And I only want one minister – and not a highly religious minister, either. One of those heathen-style ministers. And one more thing."

He paused.

"What?" asked Cameron.

"Promise me you'll be there with me, holding my hand and loving me just exactly the way you do now. Because if you're there it doesn't matter if there's pearly gates, or a whole herd of ministers – if you're there, I don't have to be scared. You promise?"

"I promise," she said, although she could barely speak.

She kissed his aftershave-scented cheek, then leaned against his shoulder. The highway led on into the deepening twilight, snowflakes drawn to their headlights, with each mile a bit further from the funeral, a bit closer to their own mortality.

Fat clothes

2012-01-04T17:30:00.001-05:00

WHAT IF?

I shoved the question to the back of my noodle as I shoved clothes into plastic garbage bags. I tried not to look at the clothes in my hand. It was like trying not to look at the sun during an eclipse.

Those are the most comfortable jeans you've ever owned. Look at that elastic waistband! OMG, you could eat Christmas dinner for main course and Thanksgiving for dessert and those pants would still fit.

"No!" I said. To myself, not out loud, because I'm not as crazy as I sound.

I stuffed the jeans in the bag.

The tailored white linen shorts I bought last summer. I think I only wore them twice. They looked so good, so polished. "Maybe I should hang onto them. Maybe I could wear them to work next summer." Maybe if I regained 50 pounds ...

I flung the shorts in the bag.

Lingerie I've never worn but it's oh-so-pretty and maybe some day I'll wear it. What if I need a romantic peach boudoir set? A four-sizes-too-big boudoir set? I mean, you never know when one of those oversized nighty-nights come in handy - like for when the sail on the boat needs replaced.

What if I gained back all that weight in the near future and I wanted to wear those comfy jeans and those tailored shorts? I mean, it's happened before. Lose weight, gain weight – over the years I have accumulated an entire wardrobe of different-sized clothes, some of it dating back 20 years.

How comfortable is that, to be able to eat what you want, knowing that, no matter how big your waistline is, there's still something in the dresser for you to wear? Too comfortable for my liking. Besides, my dresser drawers were so full of crap I never wore that I could barely open or close them.

I was getting frustrated and knew I had to throw stuff out but kept procrastinating… I think having an oversized wardrobe close at hand is like Linus' blanket.

The last straw was watching Hoarders the other night. "Good thing I'm not like that," I said to Dave.

"Oh really?" said Dave.

"I don't hoard anything!"

"Have you seen your dresser drawers lately?"

(Erm, actually no. They were too full to see anything.)

Today I was home from work with a cold. (Fecking cold and flu season and, yes, I had a flu shot so shaddup already.) Not fit to do anything really constructive, I decided to clean out my underwear drawer. Just for starters.

The clean-out was exhilarating and before I knew it I had emptied out an enormous pile of crap onto the bed. "I gotta take a picture of THAT," I said to myself. (Again, not out loud.) To give you some perspective on how big the pile is, I made my dog sit beside it. (Sit, I said SIT.)

My dog is a German Shepherd.

That's some pile of crap, eh? I'd offer to give it to you but, seriously, it will not fit you, no matter how many doughnuts you're stuffing in your gub as you read this. (OK… maybe a few more and you're close.)

I do have some crap I want to give away. Like this laughing cow. As cute as it is, I just don't need a laughing cow. If you want it, tell me in the comments. If I get more than one person wanting it, I'll drop your comments in a hat. I'll drop you an e-mail if you're the big winner, asking for your mailing address.

And no, you're not having my fat clothes.

I said NO.

Geez….

Creamer crusade

2012-01-03T14:36:00.002-05:00

I can't find my frickin' favourite coffee creamer.

I've looked everywhere. It's like the Hunt for Red October, except it's not, at all really, with no submarines and it's not October and it's in a blackish bottle with no red. But it's exactly like that otherwise.

It's called International House Coffeehouse Delights Caramel Macchiato Fat Free coffee creamer. Stupid long name. It's so long that I can never remember what it's called when I ask the grocery store people if they have it out back. "Erm, do you have any of that Caramel Fat Free International Something-Something Crap with the Long Name?"

I hate the name on the bottle but I love it's creamy innards so.

It's sweet, but not too sweet, and it's FAT FREE so I can drink TONS of it and don't feel guilty and it has become my obsession because, like every other product I love on this stupid planet, it got me hooked and now I CAN'T FIND IT.

I have been to six grocery stores in the last few days looking for it.

A few stores had it, but the expiry date was Dec. 21 which, in case you're wondering, was LAST YEAR. Kinda out of date, wouldn't you say? Probably a little on the lumpy side, last year's creamer. Speaking of lumpy, I told the lumpy oaf-child stocking bags of milk that the creamers were out of date. He nodded dopily (picture Shrek with expensive running shoes) and said something about pulling them from the shelves and thanked the old hag (me) for pointing it out. I was back there yesterday and last year's creamers were STILL THERE. That oaf-child is precisely why society is going to hell in a hand-cart.

A couple stores don't carry it at all and the ones that do don't seem to notice any difference between the fat-free stuff and the plaster-it-directly-on-your-ass stuff and thus I have to make Dave stand up on the cooler ledge and dig around. He makes a proper mess doing so but it serves Shrekus Dopimus right for not stocking the shelves correctly. I'm sure grocery store managers everywhere must see us coming and go, "Oh no, there's that crazy couple that climbs inside the milk cooler."

Wait till we show up with balaclavas over our faces and my son's pellet gun. I'll go all Bonnie and Clyde over their creamless arses hollering "GET ME MY INTERNATIONAL HOUSE COFFEEHOUSE DELIGHTS CARAMEL MACCHIATO FAT FREE CREAMER AND NO ONE GETS HURT."

The balaclavas are actually a good idea. Dave says it gets pretty cold inside the milk cooler. Yesterday he either said, "Hold my butt so I don't fall out," or "It's so cold my nuts bawl and pout."

Angus's Really Big Shew

2012-01-02T09:28:00.000-05:00

Proud? You betcha!

This You Tube video was shot by my youngest son, Sam, at the Haliburton Highlands Secondary School Tribute Concert, held just before Christmas. The performers are my oldest son, Angus (playing bass) and his friend Bethalin, who sings a mighty version of one of Adele's hit songs. Honestly, their performance was the best of the night and I'm not just saying that because I'm Gus's mother! Have a listen, see if you don't agree!

Oh, that hooting and hollering at the end? That's me!

Year in Review - 2011

2011-12-31T12:56:00.002-05:00

All newspapers do a Year in Review this time of year, partly because there's nothing much going on in the community except drunken carousing, but partly because we feel a need, as human beings, to look back on what we've accomplished. We want to know, was it all worthwhile? Did we come out on the other side with anything other than a few new wrinkles and a lot more bills?

This is my third Review since I started blogging. Hard to believe Life on the Muskoka River is that old. It all still feels new. I still feel like a luddite, a beginner; sometimes I feel the blogging run has dried up and come to a close. Then I remember why I started blogging in the first place: because I missed writing my column in the weekly newspapers I used to work for. This blog has always been, and will always be, my column. It just doesn't get printed anymore. Oh, and I don't get paid, either. Who cares, though. When you're a columnist, you don't write for yourself as much as you're writing for your boss and for readers. This blog thing, well, it's for me. It's my venting, my personal recording device, my diary, my calendar. I've met friends here, really really wonderful friends, and the blog itself has become my friend. Sitting here at my laptop, banging out a few words here and there and tossing them to the internet winds, is as comfortable as my old jeans – the ones I shrunk out of and am now going to throw out.

Speaking of shrinking, 2011 was the year I realized how fat I was and how I needed to do something about it. I started Weight Watchers at the end of July and have since lost 52.5 pounds. I have let myself enjoy the Christmas holidays but I haven't lost sight of my goal and plan on losing another 50 pounds by July 1. That way I'll be bathing-suit ready when summer holidays roll around (I'm planning on stuffing any extra skin into my bikini top to make me look more well-endowed). My August photo for 2011 was chosen with a great deal of pain. It's the photo of me in a hammock at Inverhuron Provincial Park. Before losing weight, I would never, ever have shown you this photo. I look like an old, fat whale, bloated, pale and, oh, I dunno, BLOATED is as good a word as any. (Kudos to Dave for loving such a fat wife.) It physically makes me uncomfortable to look at it, but I need to see it and realize how fat I was. I can't go back there. I'm getting too old for not looking after myself. A body like that can cause a heart attack and, gawd, I want to at least finish writing my novel before I croak.

2011 was also about writing. This was the year I realized I could actually write a book, thanks to the encouragement of all my writerly friends and a successful run at National Writing Month. Writing 50,000 words in the month of November was gruelling but exhilarating all at the same time. I am now only 10 to 30,000 words away from finishing the book and it's my goal in January to get most of that done. I want it edited and sent off to publishers by the end of 2012. I'm going to shop it around first but am not going to get hung up on publishing the old-fashioned way. If it doesn't get picked up fairly quickly, I'm going to publish it myself. It's a good story. It will make people laugh and cry, and it deserves to be read. Whether that will be in the book store or via Amazon, matters not a whit. It's a fabulous time to be a writer and you can't believe how excited I am to be doing this.

Looking back, 2011 was a pretty good year. I rediscovered the joy of bicycling and cycled almost every day here along the riverbank, as well as on trails on some of this province's most beautiful parks.

I felt settled at work, despite the newspaper industry's state of flux. I contributed every chance I could and I feel my brainier efforts were recognized and rewarded. I finally feel like part of the team and that's a very good feeling.

My family life is solid, warm and welcoming. I have a wonderful marriage, I really do, and I continue to be amazed by my children as they grow up into intelligent, unselfish young men. My mom has had a rough go of it, healthwise, this Christmas but her indomitable spirit will see her through and I wish her nothing but good health in the coming year.

I have good friends. The best, really. I'm lucky, and I know it. I live a peaceful, happy, comfortable life in one of the most beautiful parts of the world.

It may not be perfect, but what the feck is?

Happy New Year, everyone!

January 5, 2011
The view from our driveway.
The south arm of the Muskoka River was almost frozen over. The world was white and wonderful.
I had the WORST cold in the first two months of 2011. I was never so sick and miserable.
OK, so I probably was. But it's whiny-cool to exaggerate like that.
The dead birch in the foreground finally broke off and floated downstream at the end of the year.
The big dead spruce is still there, though. It's a great cover for little fish and the big fish
who drop by to gobble them up.

February 19, 2011
At the Big Nickel in Sudbury, Ont., freezing our nuts off.
Man, it was COLD. We were up north to watch our friend's daughter, Megan,
play in a hockey tournament with the Almaguin Gazelles. We had an AWESOME
time! As well as hooting and hollering at the hockey rink, we found time for
some tourist-trapping. Science North was closed but we did enjoy our tour of
Dynamic Earth and our photo-op with the world's biggest nickel.

March 26, 2011
Posing with my pal and colleague Pamela Steel (and her pooch) at
a sugaring off party in her Port Sydney neighbourhood. Every year her neighbours
collect sap from the local trees and then get together to boil it down and share the
resulting sweetness. Speaking of sweet, the dear Mizz Steel
(amazing bestselling cookbook author, award-winning newspaper writer extraordinaire
AND chef) is someone I desire to be exactly like. Thanks for the party invite, Pamela!
We had a suh-weet time!

April 18, 2011
OK, this is ridiculous. I can't believe it's been since last April that
we were at Deb and Dave's house. We had the BEST time, drinking coffee and
talk-talk-talking and laugh-laugh-laughing about everything and nothing. The occasion
was bringing my favourite Great White North blogger buddy her prizes in my Damned Door Contest,
but really it was just an excuse to fraternize with some really outstanding
people. Seriously, Deb, we have to get together again soon. Hopefully before next April.

May 7, 2011
Every spring Dave and I go up north to Kiosk
for our spring fishing trip. This spring we went twice! Once
with family (Tom and Sue Webster) and once by ourselves.
The first time we got skunked, fish-wise (there was still ice
on the lake when we arrived) but the following weekend
we caught plenty. One of our biggest pleasures is camping,
being outdoors and fishing. Kiosk always signals the
beginning to camping season. This year, however, we're
starting things even earlier: we have booked a weekend in
a "yurt" in Killarney Provincial Park. Winter camping!
Bring it ON!

June 27, 2011
My blue-haired baby, Angus, graduated from
Grade 8. The whole fam-damily showed up to cheer him on.
Thank goodness his hair is back to being blonde as he navigates
his way through the horrors of Grade 9. I remember Grade 9 with
no small amount of wretchedness. I keep telling him, things will
get better when all the dough-heads drop out. Hang in there!

July 16, 2011
Killarney Provincial Park. Dave and I left the trailer at home and
only took the tent and our canoe for an absolutely fabulous camping weekend.
Killarney has to be one of the most beautiful parks I've ever visited.
Staggering white granite mountains; crystal clear water. A zillion miles
from the madding crowds.

August 8, 2011
Two weeks into my diet. I'd already lost nearly nine pounds.
I am embarrassed by my bloated ugliness in this photo and thrilled that I don't look
like this anymore. Since then I have lost 52.5 pounds and dyed my hair back to its normal
brown colour. The woman in this photo was unknowingly drowning in an unhappy sea of fat.
I feel so much better now – and I still have so far to go. Losing weight is the
hardest thing anyone can do, but it's so worth it. If you're starting a diet in the new
year, I wish you nothing but luck. Let me know how it goes, will you? I think we need
to support each other.

September 30, 2011
This was the night I met superstar Canadian author
Margaret Atwood. She was LOVELY, FUNNY, GRACIOUS and really, really cute!
Then, she TWEETED me! Squeeeeeeeee!!!!

October 8, 2011
For everyone else, Thanksgiving weekend was a time of feasting
and gaining weight. Not for me and my bestie, Tammy. We spent all the entire
weekend at Algonquin Park, hiking, cycling and walking. We never quit.
It was like bootcamp, only with turkey. And it was FUN! Tammy is my inspiration.
She has lost a great deal of weight and she is more determined than anyone I know.
She is also a wonderful, loving friend and I consider myself lucky to know her.

November 23, 2011
In the homestretch of finishing NaNoWriMo (National Writing
Month), in which insane people all over the world attempt to write 50,000 words of
a novel in the month of November. It was a horror show some days, I have to be honest,
but the thrill of banging down most of my novel in a month was FAN-FECKING-TASTIC.
My writing buddies were always my two lazy cats. And that's a sock stuck to my foot,
in case you were wondering.

December 25, 2011
Walking along the banks of the Muskoka River. This seemed
like an appropriate photo to finish with ... walking into the great unknown of
another year. Will it hold great things? Will everyone be healthy and happy?
Will I finish my book? Lose another 50 pounds? Save some money?
Will I blog?
Does a bear shit in the woods?

Deck the halls with boughs of vomit

2011-12-27T07:51:00.000-05:00

I was humming Christmas carols this morning while making coffee.

This happens to me every year. I'm slow getting into the Christmas spirit but, by the time it's over, I'm in full-on, meet-me-under-the-mistletoe, buy-something, wrap-something, eat-something seasonal-greetings splendour. So I feel like the little brother in A Christmas Story, the kid who is so overdressed that he can't walk, can't run, can't fart, and is continuously whining, "Come on guys, wait up guys, oh guys..." That's me, whining, as the Christmas train blows past.

Yesterday was one of those days you wish never happened. We were headed north to visit friends we hadn't seen in some time. Sam seemed fine before we left. He was having a little trouble going to the bathroom (he gets constipated sometimes) but nothing untoward. He started looking uncomfortable just as we passed the last turn-off to civilization and public bathrooms. When it was clear we were in the land of nothing-but-swamps-and-bush, he suddenly announced, "I gotta have a crap and I feel like I'm gonna throw up!"

Nothing speeds a driver to a curb as fast as a kid saying the throw-up word. Tires squealed and my face just missed hitting the dash as Dave swerved off the highway. I jumped out to help Sam get out of the car safely and then watched as he scrabbled down a steep, snow-covered embankment. At first it looked like he was going to throw up, all gaggy and retchy and such. Then, without further adieu, he yanked down his jeans and squatted in the ditch.

I was impressed and repulsed all at the same time. My kid was going to defecate at the side of a busy four-laned highway. I have Crohn's disease and I wouldn't be caught doing that in a zillion years. I can't see very well at the moment (my cataracts) so I thought, maybe he's only peeing.

"Are you peeing?" I asked. Hopefully.

"I'm crapping," said my son.

Oh geez.

"I'll go get you some Kleenex," I said. I grabbed a box out of the car.

Dave asked, "Is he puking?"

"No," I said, "apparently he is crapping."

"Oh geez," Dave said.

I thought I could just lob the Kleenex box straight to Sam, but I missed by, like, 20 feet and thus had to slide down the embankment towards the crapping child to wrangle the box out of the only tree in the ditch and hand it over. I did so, discreetly, not wanting to embarrass Sam, who was already crapping in front of every person driving north on one of Ontario's busiest north-south highways and probably didn't care one iota about crapping in front of his mother. Although I would never crap in front of my mother. I don't think. Maybe if I was desperate. OK, so Sam was desperate.

Moving on, we came to Burk's Falls where there is a Tim Horton's.

"Sam," I said, "would you like to go to Timmy's and use their bathroom?"

"Yes," said Sam.

Thank goodness, I thought. An actual bathroom will be so much less embarrassing than a ditch. While Sam was in the bathroom, Angus and I went to the counter and ordered coffee and hot chocolate. I was just about to pay the nice young cashier when Sam came up to us, white-faced and sick-looking.

"Mom," he said, "I just vomited in the bathroom."

The cashier's smile disappeared but she continued to get my change.'

Inside I was thinking, "isn't it cute how he uses the word vomit?" What I said was, "You threw up in the toilet, right?"

Sam shook his head. "There was somebody on the toilet so I vomited on the floor."

All colour drained from the cashier's face and, I swear, went to mine. I looked to her and squeaked, "I'm sorry."

"That's OK," she said, but I wasn't convinced.

I told Sam to go back in the men's room and wash up. Apparently he still had to use the toilet as well, "but the man who was in there got poo all over the seat," so he decided against it.

Those poor Timmy's staff. Cleaning up my son's vomit and some old guy's poo. There ain't enough money in the world to pay me to do that.

Top photo: my new coat and mittens I found under the tree. Thanks Santa!
Second photo: Misty in her Christmas dress.
Third: Dave with our festive mailbox.
Fourth: my handsome non-puking men - Sam, Dave and Angus.
Fifth: me and Dave wishing you and yours a happy ho-ho-ho.

A country church on Christmas Eve

2011-12-24T21:29:00.002-05:00

A baby, face red and damp with sleep, dozes in his mother's arms.

His older brother, in a Santa hat, squishes down on the small spot left on her knee.

Her eyes are heavy; they almost close during Silent Night. Two long weeks of shopping, wrapping and cooking with two young children in tow has worn down her edges. She is soft in the glow of candles. Around her the Christmas Eve congregation sings lustily of peace and the birth of Christ, but the young mother dreams of just one night of uninterrupted sleep.

Her baby's hands are chubby and small. I long to reach over and touch them. I remember how perfect a baby's fingers are, like silk, like joy, like love.

He stirs and opens his sleepy eyes. The old man behind smiles at the tyke. The baby smiles back. The young mother kisses his forehead, kisses his cheek, touches him with her loving fingers and her soul.

This is Christmas.

This crowded country church.

These people.

This moment.

This is Christmas and this is why I love it.

To all my friends far and near, may happiness and peace find your heart this Christmas.
And may you find love, the greatest gift of all.

Best commercial ever!

2011-12-23T09:22:00.002-05:00

Oh man. This is SUCH a great TV commercial, I just had to share. It's so "Muskoka," it might as well have been filmed at my house – I swear, that's the beaver who hangs out at our dock.

Ironically, we can't subscribe to Netflix because we live so far out in the boonies that there's no Wi-Fi service. I don't have any idea how the beaver managed to get it at his house.

I'm gonna have to have a word with that buck-toothed rodent.

Speaking of videos, you simply MUST drop around to see my Newfoundland friend Alan at Conversations From Land's Edge. He just posted about the Rock's unique and wonderful tradition of Mummering and the clip he shared from an old CBC special is just DELIGHTFUL. So Canadian. So very, very sweet.

Christmas photos from the chocolate box

2011-12-21T08:41:00.000-05:00

"Christmas isn't the same anymore." That's what my mom said last night.

"Your father loved Christmas and it doesn't seem the same without him."

I found these old photos in a long-empty chocolate box when I was looking for photos of him and Aunt Judy for my last post. When all of these were taken, Christmas was pure, unadulterated magic. My siblings and I would get so wound up on Christmas Eve that we'd puke all night. My poor mother. It was bad enough, doing all the work she had to do to prepare, without the added burden of holding back hair, wiping foreheads and cleaning up from those who didn't make it down the hall.

My mom says Christmas isn't the same without Dad, but it has always been Mom who has made the holiday spring to life. She never missed a beat: all the food was homemade and fabulous. Her fudge was neighbourhood renowned. She stored it in a green Tupperware crisper in the bar fridge in the basement, making it in advance so there'd be plenty on Dec. 25. We'd steal it every chance we got in the weeks before, until, invariably, she'd be forced to make fudge on Dec. 24 because we'd cleaned the Tupperware out of everything but crumbs.

Mom had a record book for Christmas cards. In the days before computers, this was her storage unit of addresses, births, deaths, who sent a card last year, who was sent a card, new people, old people – it was all there. As a result, our own house was filled with cards from well-wishers from far and near. Mom hung them all over the house, resplendent in their own Christmassy glory.

She shopped, she wrapped, she decorated, she baked, she worked and worked and worked and I never heard a word of complaint.

Mom, maybe you're feeling a little down this year, maybe you do feel Christmas isn't the same without Dad. But I can tell you, without any word of a lie, that as long as we have you, we will always have Christmas.

Top photo: My mom on Christmas morning in Markham, Ont., mid-1970s.
Above, family photo in Midland. That's me, Mom, my brother Billy and my Dad.
We were posed in the parlour of the old Victorian house on Seventh Street.
It was a room we were almost never allowed in – the exception
was piano practice and Christmas Day. This photo was probably taken in 1965,
before my sister, Liz, was born in 1967. I remember that old teddy bear.
Much loved, it was.

My parents, probably at a New Year's Eve party.
Look how young and adorable they are.

Christmas, mid-1970s. I think I was in Grade 11 because I remember that stupid haircut.
That's my cousin, Karen, in my lap with one of her ratty dolls. She got a new doll every Christmas
and then proceeded to demolish it with bubble gum and jam and other muck.
On the couch is her brother, Paul, with her parents, Uncle Howard and Aunt Mary,
as well as my brother and my dad.

Once Christmas morning was out of the way we went to my grandparents' house in Buttonville, Ont.
That's a photo of me with my Grandma, Hazel Hooper (and my cousin David in the foreground).
Grandma's house plays a big part in the novel I'm writing. This room, in fact, stars as
Weezie Polk's refuge from the big bad world. The house is torn down, has been for decades,
to make room for a stupid industrial plaza, but I'll never forget it.

Bill, Liz and me, probably around 1973.
Doesn't everybody look kind of dopey and messed up on Christmas morning?
Or was it just us? Liz certainly looks raring to go!

Not sure what year this was, but I was probably a senior in high school, judging by my haircut.
(How I judge everything but I really am terrible at remembering dates.)
One of our family's many traditions included a photo of stocking hanging on Christmas Eve.

Check out the tape recorder one of us got for Christmas. At the time it was
pretty high-tech equipment.

Faces in a Crowd

2011-12-19T21:23:00.002-05:00

Ghosts are everywhere.

In a flash, in a breath, on one tactile whoosh of heart.

I am adjusting a newspaper photograph taken at a children's Christmas party. The computer screen is lit up with squealing children dressed in their dime store best, sateen dresses with tube socks and scuffed running shoes; daddys' ties hanging crookedly under grinning freckled, dimpled chins; cheap, borrowed Santa suit, velvet rubbed off the elbows and knees, stomach pillow protruding beneath matted fake fur.

A woman in the background catches my eye. Smiling, middle-aged, with loose bleached blonde curls and dark roots, big-bosomed, blue frosty eyeshadow gleaming in the mid-audience gloom.

Aunt Judy.

Big laugh, terrible cook, huge heart.

Scrappy. Punched out my uncle's first wife at the side of a highway one day.

Grew up hard but knew the meaning of love. Survived a first husband that beat her and a fire that destroyed everything in her house but hope.

Forearms ringed with deep, ropey scars.

Had a thing for angels.

Never anything but wonderful to me.

Dead for five years; cancer. I went to see her on her deathbed. She was conscious, eyes sharp-lit with pain. Her children and grandchildren waited outside. I held her hand and remembered the time she made lemon meringue pie from scratch, only she forgot to add sugar and our mouths puckered up like they'd been slapped then turned inside out.

"I can't talk," she had said. So I talked for both of us, stupidly.

***

I am at the fall fair watching the horse pull. Surrounded by old farmers in suspenders and young bucks in John Deere ball caps, air redolent with manure, chewing tobacco and cotton candy. Sun too hot for autumn sweaters, tied carelessly around women's waists. Kids whine, kids puke, kids are kids. A swift breeze riffs through my son's still-10-year-old hair.

I see him in the crowd. Plaid long-sleeved shirt tight over a round Molson muscled belly. Black vinyl eyeglass case in his front pocket. Blue work pants, filthy cuffs. Silver hair, barely thinning.

Dad.

Five years gone.

The blood thins through my heart in a fractured sigh.

Photos, from top: Aunt Judy and Uncle George at Christmas in our rec room in Markham, Ont., circa 1975.
Dad heading off to work at the Canadian Pacific Railway in Midland, Ont., sometime in the early 1960s.
Heading off to work again – this time from our home in Markham, probably in the late 1970s.
Mom and Dad on a trip out west, circa 1988. This was Dad's 'uniform' of his later years. Plaid shirt, suspenders, ball cap.
Dad on a snowmobile trip in the Haliburton area, sometime in the late 1970s. I love this photo of him. So handsome. My son, Angus, now drives this snowmobile, a 340 Olympic Ski-Doo.
I miss my Dad, so much. This photo brings me to tears.

Cat poo for Christmas and owie-owie-owie

2011-12-19T07:51:00.000-05:00

The cat is so damned annoying sometimes. He's under the Christmas tree, as we speak, stepping on stuff. Oh wait, now he's on the pile of paper in the burn pile, pawing it around. I hope he doesn't think it's kitty litter – he's not the brightest feline on the block. One thing I don't want to unwrap on Christmas morning is a dessicated cat turd.

Ask me what we did this weekend. Go ahead. Ask.

We bought a new TV Saturday morning. We had to, because the old one died. Well, it didn't die so much as whimpered a bit. Occasionally there were purple blotches on the right side of the screen. And then yellow splotches showed up sometimes on the right. Dave has been drooling over the new big screen TVs for some time and those splotches were enough to send him over the edge and straight into the arms of the local TV store. God help me if I ever get splotches on one side. Even a fat zit might be enough to see my arse plunked on the sidewalk.

But we couldn't just get a TV, oh no. We had to redo our entire living room. The old TV was one of those square tube jobbies and it was housed in a solid pine entertainment centre that Dave had built himself back in the early '90s. My husband is a talented woodworker and this puppy was phenomenal – it also had big hair – but it was designed for the old tube TVs so it wasn't any good for our new one. So it was off to IKEA for a new TV stand. Only we couldn't just get a stand – we had to get a matching wall shelf and a book shelf because IKEA is like crack and we had two gift cards from our wedding (thank you Mark and Dave O) and My Name is Cathy and I'm an IKEA-holic.

IKEA is a long way away from life here in the Muskoka boonies so the shopping trip took most of the day. Especially when it was combined with a trip to the Mandarin buffet (oh gawd, it's Weight Watchers tonight – I'm screwed). We got home early Saturday night and Dave set right to work putting the IKEA stuff together. Dave is all too familiar with the IKEA alan-key but obviously I wasn't thinking straight when I said, "You're an old pro at this now. You should be able to put this stuff together in your sleep."

I was in the other room when I heard hims swearing. The first time. Two of the three items were almost completely assembled when he realized he had a couple pieces on backwards and thus had to tear them all apart and start over. The first time he had a sense of humour about it. The second time, not so much.

Yesterday we finished the assembling and started renovating. Because essentially this is what we did. Everything had to be moved out of the living room. All the CDs, DVDs, decks of cards, old photos, books, candles and crap had to be emptied out of the old entertainment centre. Then we had to carry the thing (did I mention it's solid pine?) up to the bunkie. The bunkie, in case you didn't know, and how could you unless you've been here, is a separate apartment on the second floor above our garage. In the summer we use it as a guest house and in the winter it's simply a big crap warehouse.

Oh. That thing was heavy. And oh, my back. My shoulders. My legs. My arms. Even my butt hurts. How did that happen? Dave obviously doesn't realize I was built for eating bon-bons on the couch, not heaving couches up narrow steep flights of stairs. Did I mention we also moved a couch? Needlessly? Once we got all the IKEA stuff set up we had room for another seat of some kind. I suggested the love seat we have in the bunkie. So, after pushing that heavy mother of an entertainment centre up the stairs, we brought down the almost-as-heavy love seat down the stairs. Only to find out it was way too big for our space. (Can anyone say "measure first?") Before we could fully grasp how stupid we were, we moved it back up those stairs. Cathy's Furniture Moving Service: Moving Crap Needlessly Around Since 2011.

See that pine thing on the left?
That's the old entertainment centre. Twenty-ton Tessie.
Living room's a mess.

That's not a smile on Dave's face. It's a grimace.
Just a moment before he was saying, "I don't WANT my fecking picture taken."

Dave's ass.

"Are you taking pictures of my ass?"
"No, of course not. I'm taking pictures of the Christmas tree."

Our new living room. Notice I took photos while sports was on
because I am so interested in go-kart racing or whatever it is that's playing.

I have a bookcase! I have a bookcase!
More excited about this than the TV. Okay, so that's not true.
It is pretty good, though.
Now I have a place to store all the books I feel guilty about not reading.

Love You and other baloney

2011-12-15T22:23:00.000-05:00

"Love you," said my ex-husband.

To me.

Last night on the phone.

OK, so it's just a lingering habit after 19 years of marriage. Or maybe he still does love me because, frankly, who doesn't love me (HAR), and he finally realizes that I was the best frickin' thing that ever happened to him and now he's sorry. Probably though, he only said it because he says it all the time to the kids, his mother, his stepfather, the cashier at Scrawl-Mart and whatever young figure-skating, money-counting ditch pig tart he's seeing; whoever. Whomever. Whatever. He hasn't said it to me, though. Not lately. Not since his cheating shit hit the family fan about a hundred years ago.

He said it and then he realized what he said and then the bluff blustery apologies spewing out of his gob made me feel like puking. And then laughing. Hysterical laughing.

"Yeah, yeah," I said. Brusquely. (I love the word brusque – it's so curt, even when it's an adverb.)

And I hung the hell up.

(That's our wedding photo. August 16, 1986. It was the anniversary of Elvis Presley's death. We got married at sunset, on the edge of the pond on my parents' farm. Our reception was held in the barn they had just built. There was a corn roast and porta-potties and food from the ladies of the Eastern Star. We forgot to cut the cake. Marvellous Marvin was the DJ and he was anything but marvellous. I was young and cuter than I thought and stupid as hell. My father looked handsome in his tuxedo, though pensive. He looks like he knew what I was in for, and was worried.)

Catherine Austen in my mailbox

2011-12-14T08:24:00.000-05:00

The mailbox, just one more thing around here that makes me feel guilty.

Why I think I have time for reading is beyond me. One of my bloggy friends, Kathy, was complaining recently that she had only read "less than" two dozen books since September. Seriously? ONLY a couple of dozen? The only book I have read in its entirety since my holidays last summer, is The War of Art, which is a very, very slim book and easily digested. (Kathy, you should read this – I guarantee it will help you shake writer's block).

Granted, I've been writing, which to me is better, karmic-wise, than reading. But still – reading has somehow deserted me and I'm not sure how to get it back. I have this vague notion that I will miraculously find time to read, sometime soon, but no concrete plans on how to bring this about. As a result I have books piling up that deserve to be read. They sit there, in various spots around the house, screaming at me every time I walk by. They're like Jewish grandmothers, sans the chicken soup, making me feel guilty at every turn.

Icy Sedgwick's delicious looking western pulp fiction, The Guns of Retribution, sits on the desktop of my computer. Every time I turn on the laptop, the e-book glares at me. It is such a cool looking book, too. The cover is amazing. It sits there, waiting non too patiently, while I write my own book. I am torn by indecision. Should I write? Should I read? I choose writing, because the book can wait but my own muse can not. But I feel guilty and sure that Icy is gonna pull out her own guns of retribution some day.

Beside my bed is the half-finished award-winning novel by Terry Fallis, The Best Laid Plans. It is such a good book. So funny. It always makes me laugh. It's sitting gathering dust with my half-finished copy of The Help, which is also a wonderful book. Unfortunately I went to see the movie before I was finished reading and no longer feel the need to finish it. I hear CBC is making a movie about Best Laid Plans. God help me, I hope I get the book done before the movie comes out.

Dave has practically adopted my Kindle, which is chock full of books I haven't read yet. He has been reading it every night. First he fell in love with Aaron Polson's book, Loathsome, Dark and Deep. Then he downloaded a bunch of Louis L'Amour westerns. Dave loves his westerns. I think I'm going to have him read Icy's book. Two birds with one stone, kind of thing.

As if I don't have enough to feel guilty about, my mailbox recently filled up with two books by Catherine Austen. I won them during a blog book tour. Which is fabulous, right? All I have to do now is read them!

The first book is 26 Tips for Surviving Grade 6, a book seemingly made for my youngest son, Sam, who currently is in Grade 5 and is no doubt worried about Grade 6. I suspect this book is more for girls than boys (due to the magenta coloured cover) but Sam was looking for something to read on the weekend so I gave him this and he was on to page 31 in half an hour, a clear sign that the book is good.

The other book is All Good Children, a young adult story whose back blurb says, "Living with hope is like rubbing up against a cheese grater. It keeps taking slices off you until there's so little left you just crumble." Oh dear. It sounds deep. And sad. And yet funny, all at the same time. Life is like a cheese grater? Perfect! It is, isn't it? It gets the job done but you always wind up with fingernail in your lasagna. Way to be real, Catherine.

Catherine Austen, by the way, sounds really interesting. Here's the bit she posted about herself on her blog:

"I live in Quebec with my husband, Geoff, and our children, Sawyer and Daimon. We live with our old dog, Charlie, and our young cats, Isis and Playdoh. We have a little house with a big yard full of rodents, rabbits, and the occasional fox and falcon. It is inspiring.
"I write reports for corporate clients to help pay the bills. I enjoy all kinds of writing, but I get irritable if I don't take the time to write fiction regularly. I think up stories while walking my dog, exercising, and staring out of windows.
I like to write funny things and sad things. I'm not much good at any other kind of thing. I don't always understand what I write until I've written it and read it back a few times. When I write something well, I feel more like its witness than its creator.
"I like yoga, drums, and swimming with flippers on my feet. I quilt by hand in front of the television while watching So You Think You Can Dance. I make good cookies and great salads. I take awesome photographs of mushrooms.
"I love wildlife, music and museums. I don't care about houses, clothes, or celebrity gossip. I hate fashion magazines, but I sometimes read them in waiting rooms and find them hard to put down. I love to read aloud (books, that is, not fashion mags)."

Doesn't she sound cool? I think so. I'll let you know more when I read her books. And finish Terry's. And read Icy's. And every book I've got enthusiastically languishing around my person.

P.S. to Shannon Esposito - my mom just finished reading Strange New Feet and she LOVED it. Thought you should know!

Bag of Bones

2011-12-12T23:25:00.000-05:00

'Grampa, get outta my bed, you old perv!"

Meh. That's pretty much how I feel about the A&E mini-series Bag of Bones. It was OK but nothing compared to Stephen King's novel, which I consider to be far and away the best thing he ever wrote.

Maybe if I hadn't read the book, didn't have such high expectations, I might have enjoyed it more. It was like The Shipping News by Annie Proulx. The book was fabulous, one of my all-time favourites. The movie? Less than meh. (Kevin Spacey as Quoyle? Pffffft.) I guess when books are so over-the-top great, the movies simply can't compete.

I'm a fan of Pierce Brosnan but honestly, he was too old to play Mike Noonan. All I could think of was, how can Jo, his good looking wife, and that tart Matty Devore both be attracted to that old guy? I sure as heck wouldn't kick Brosnan out of bed for eating crackers but I'm an old fart myself and can be forgiven for being attracted to other old farts.

I always imagined Stephen King as Mike Noonan and Brosnan did have a Stephenish-Kingish quality in the mini-series. Still, there are plenty of 30 to 40-something actors who could have filled the bill far more nicely than the hunky but aging ex-Bond.

The other thing is, the film just skirted the dark corners of the novel, the very corners that made Bag of Bones one of King's most critically acclaimed works. To me it was brilliance from start to finish with dark literary nuances.

By the way, forgive the typos in this post. I went to see an opthamologist this afternoon – I'm going to be having cataract surgery in the new year. He dilated my eyeballs to the size of dinner plates and I can't see a goldurned thing. Perhaps I might have enjoyed Bag of Bones more had I been able to see. Then again, I'm sure the rather elderly Mike Noonan only benefited from my soft-focus eyeballs.

Oh gawd, Pierce, if you happen to read this, forgive my ageist comments. And if you want to pop by with a box of crackers, I'd be more than happy to spend some alone time with ya. I'm sure Dave wouldn't mind. All you have to do is point me in the direction of the bedroom. The things we can do with my white cane and a box of crackers ....

Hot Mama #2

2011-12-10T09:34:00.000-05:00

OK, dress #2. Low-cut ruffled neckline, flattering swish at the hips, as opposed to strapless and sequinned. Dave likes this one better because, as he says, "it really shows off the girls."

It's all about the girls, for Dave.

Which one do you like better? Gawd knows, I want to hear. Yesterday's comments blew me away. YOU GUYS ARE SO FUNNY. I was laughing out loud all day long, you know, when I wasn't dancing around to Nancy Sinatra's These Boots are Made for Walking.

Speaking of boots, I DID IT! I hugged the Boss! My sassy friend and colleague Sarah had promised me $5 in raffle tickets if I hugged the boss, something that just isn't regularly done at my office. I was kinda hoping she would have forgotten about the bet but even before dinner was served she was swaggling over saying, in her clever sing-song way, "I've got three raffle tickets with your name on them ..." So I had to, right then and there, go hug the boss. Even though I'd only had half a glass of wine and technically it wasn't nearly enough.

"OK," I said, getting up from my chair. "Let's do it." Sarah grabbed her camera and I marched over to the head table where the boss was talking to an even bigger boss (so many bosses, so little time ...). I waited until the bigger boss finished talking and then excused myself. "I made a bet with Ryeland over there, that I would hug you." I gestured to the giggling Sarah with her camera. "Three raffle tickets are on the line."

He smiled. "In that case," he said, "we'd better do it!" He stood up and gave me a sound and wonderful hug. I thanked him profusely and got carried away and planted a kiss on his cheek. He blushed and I blushed and the bigger boss laughed and Sarah took our photo. She handed over the tickets and, by rights, I should have won one of the big prizes. C'est la vie, however. I still won the bet and I had a nice hug and the boss smelled really lovely. So there!

In other party news, I had been asked by super-party-organizer Laura to rewrite Twas the Night Before Christmas and read it to the party-goers. She printed out the poem in a book form (my first published work!) and dragged out a comfy chair for me to sit on. Her cohort Stephanie held the microphone and I told the story. Way too much fun! I think everyone enjoyed it as much as me. Here's the photo Dave took. Funny thing is, even 50 pounds lighter, this photo shows me I still have many pounds to lose. So what. I knew this weight loss thing was going to take at least a year and while I still have many miles to go, I am proud of how far I have come.

Here's the poem:

‘Twas the Night before Deadline

‘Twas the night before deadline, when all through the office

Not an ad rep was stirring, except for the bosses.

The ad copy was e-mailed to production with care,

In hopes that a gosh-darned Photoshop miracle soon would be there.

Production, as usual, was strung out and weepy,

Due to copy that was misspelled, messy and creepy.

Everything said in I-Chat came out in all-caps,

As they whined and they yawned and dreamt of some naps.

When out in the parking lot there arose such loud chatter,

Bill scrambled from his desk to see what on earth was the matter.

Away to the back door he strode in a hurry,

Sending inserts and flyers to the air in a flurry.

The moon on the crest of the snow-covered asphalt

Showed gum wrappers, coffee cups and an unopened bank vault.

When, what to Bill's wondering eyes should appear,

But a safecracking dude, and eight tiny masked reindeer.

With a balaclava, some dynamite and a flickable Bic,

Bill thought it highly unlikely that this guy was St Nick.

Slower than snapping turtles his coursers they came,

And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name!

"Now, Andrew! Now, Dougie! Now, Jackie and Tony!

On, Davey! On, Jenny! Stop eating baloney!

To the top of the safe! Try not to fall!

Now blow it up! Get 'er done! Let's see it all!"

As dynamite was lit and the Bic was let fly,

The door of the safe blew up into the sky.

Into the vault the masked bandits they flew,

With a sack full of ads and a story or two.

And then, in a twinkling, Bill heard on the roof

The stomping and pounding of each rubber boot.

He went back to his office and was turning around,

When down the back stairs St. Joe came with a bound.

He was dressed in Armani, from his head to his shoe,

And his suit was all tarnished with ink shaded blue.

A bundle of newspapers he had flung on his back,

And he looked like a reporter, a full-blooded hack.

His eyes - they were bloodshot! His fingers how weary!

His cheeks were all puffy, his nose kind of beery!

His sly little mouth was drawn up in a smile,

And his Movember moustache was as long as a mile.

He was in shape and buff, a right jolly young elf,

And Bill grinned when he saw him, in spite of himself!

A peek at the quarterly report and a nod of his head,

Soon gave Bill to know he had nothing to dread.

He spoke a few words to his faithful young lads

And they began filling the papers with bazillions of ads.

And laying his orders on the desktop for Bill,

He climbed out of the office and ran up the hill.

Bill danced back to his desk, on his lips was a whistle,

There were so many ads, like the seeds in a thistle.

He flung open his window and yelled with all his might,

"Happy Newspapering to All, and to All a Good-Night!"

Hot Mama #1

2011-12-09T07:31:00.003-05:00

I know, I said there weren't any photos of me from Dave's Christmas party last Friday but, I mean look at these, they're blurry and they're unfocussed and my eyes are shut so really, I don't.

Check out those feather earrings. Yes, they're earrings. In the bottom photo they kinda look like a Playboy bow tie. Uh, no. They're dangly black feather earrings I bought when I went shopping and forgot my brain in the parking lot. I wore them for a while but I noticed people were looking at me funny. I figured it was either telltale cheesecake crumbs stuck in my teeth, boogers hanging off my nose, my gargantuan arms or those damned feathers.

See? I told you. I've been eating so much chicken lately that I've been sprouting feathers. You should see the ones growing out of my ass.

Tonight is my office Christmas party. AND I HAVE ANOTHER DRESS. I know, there are starving children around the world and I have two party dresses. But it was on sale! 50% off! I had to do it!

I promise. More photos tomorrow. I'm going to take photos of all my workmates and post them, too. And I will make fun of them, profusely, because that is how I roll. You can tell me what dress you like better, OK?

Also? My colleague Sarah has promised to buy me a $5 raffle ticket for the bigscreen TV up for grabs at the par-tay if I hug the Big Boss. Well Sarah, these gargantuan arms are made for hugging, baby, and that's just what they'll do. One of these days these arms are gonna hug all over you... badda boom, badda boom, badda boom....

Are you ready, arms?

Start hugging...

Bettman is Wrong

2011-12-08T07:51:00.001-05:00

I'm not a big hockey fan, not by any means, but something I heard on the news this morning pissed me off.

Just eight games into his return to the game following a severe concussion last January, Pittsburgh Penguins' star Sidney Crosby took a hit Monday night and has decided to sit out the next two games. It was an accidental hit, at the hands of his own team mate, but that's not what matters.

What matters is that one of the game's biggest talents might never get a chance to pursue his career because the "physicality" of hockey will threaten Crosby with brain injury at every turn.

Physicality is NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman's word.

"Our fans tell us that they like the level of physicality in our game, and for some people it's an issue but it's not as big an issue in terms of fans and people in the game to the extent that other people suggest it is," Bettman said, discussing fighting. "Maybe it is [dangerous] and maybe it's not. You don't know that for a fact and it's something we continue to monitor. The level of concussions from fighting is not rising, it's constant, so it's not an increasing problem. But, it is something we'll continue to monitor."

I don't agree. When I do watch hockey, I want to see goal scoring. I want to see the world's best talents dazzling us with their puck handling and their skating. I don't want to watch fighting or hitting. Especially when it means players will be severely hurt and put out of the game.

Bettman was talking to the New York Times about a recent analysis of the brain of NHL player Derek Boogaard that showed a link between head injuries and chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). Bettman said drawing a connection between fighting in hockey and CTE is "premature." Boogaard's brain was analyzed after his May 13 death, and the results showed Boogaard had CTE. It was the fourth brain of a former NHL player to be analyzed by researchers and confirmed to show signs of CTE.

"I think in this whole area there is probably entirely too much speculation and rumors and the like on something that is simply a tragedy," Bettman said, speaking at the conclusion of the NHL Board of Governors meeting. "With respect to what Boston University might find on CTE, they're still looking at a very limited database and in those particular cases there is no control element because you have to look at everything that went on in the person's life before you make a judgment on what a brain may show when you open it up.

"So, I think when you look at the fact that the medical community has only been dealing with the issue of concussions in the way that they have for probably the last few decades, and if you look at our history starting in 1997 and we've been across all fronts -- whether it's the study, the working groups, baseline testing, diagnosis and return-to-play protocols, rule changes, the creation of the Department of Player Safety -- we've been doing lots and lots and we'll continue to do lots and lots. But, there are no easy answers yet. And, I think it's unfortunate if people use tragedies to jump to conclusions that probably at this stage aren't supported."

How much study do you need to know that a conk on the head hurts the brain? Come on, it doesn't take a brain surgeon to know that! Read between the lines and you'll see all Bettman really cares about is money. He's afraid that ending fighting in hockey will mean the end of the money train. I think he's wrong. I think people would enjoy hockey more if there was no fighting. I love watching kids play, because they're playing – not fighting.

Boogaard's autopsy, Crosby's injury – these should be red letter flashing wake-up signs to Bettman and the NHL that it's time hockey violence came to an end. Now. Before players like Crosby wind up retired or dead.

Lollipop train derailment

2011-12-05T20:53:00.000-05:00

Where did my mojo go?

Have you seen it?

I'm half-afraid I ate the fecking thing. I've been eating everything else in sight these days, why not the lollipop train that's been chugging stupidly along the losing-weight-writing-a-novel happy track?

Picture a zombie. Mindlessly trudging along, a song in its putrefecating pustule that once was a heart, locomoting one asphalt-sucking galosh at a time until it finds some cardio-challenged fattie it can chow down on. Right? Get it? That was me, the zombie. Finishing NaNo was finding the fattie. I chowed down and now I'm at a total fecking loss at what to do next. I feel like I'm adrift in a sea of goal-lessness.

Yesterday was bad. I woke up feeling like a bear with a sore ass and I went to bed feeling like an ass with a sore bear. I had no reason for it, but there it was.

Losing 50 pounds was also like finding the fattie. Tonight I went to Weight Watchers and I am not proud to announce I gained four pounds. In one week! Feck! I came home and bawled.

Oh, I KNEW I was going to gain weight this week. I'm not making up stupid excuses – I just ate too fecking much. I ate out four times (once at the dreaded all-you-can-eat Mandarin buffet, henceforth to be known as the Mandarin Factor); I ate a wedge of chocolate birthday cake, not a piece, a wedge – it was so big you could jack up your house with it. Worse, I suddenly remembered why I was going to Weight Watchers in the first place: I LOVE TO EAT. Even now, right now, I am craving something sweet. Like Mr. Christie's Fudgeo cookies, the ones with Double Stuf (wishing there was Triple Stuf), or homemade oatmeal candy. Or my mom's shortbread cookies, the ones with the sprinkles on top. I have a Santa bowl on my kitchen table and all I can think about is how good it would look with ju-jubes in it. The really fresh kind. The ones coated in sugar. I saw someone eat a bran muffin today and I wanted to take it from him, forcefully, and stuff it into my own great gaping maw.

I'm on dangerous ground here. I know, I've been here before. I am at a crossroads of getting back on the zombie track or jumping the rails and saying "feck it" and gaining every single pound I lost and then some. You skinnies are going, "why in hell would she gain 50 pounds back?" But you fatties and former fatties, you know what I'm saying – it's a mad desperation that can grab us by the balls and send us howling back to the great buffet of life as easy and as fast as a wink of the puffy eye.

I need to find my way again. I need to find that light switch in my head that's currently switched to OFF and turn it ON again.

If I don't, there are bad times ahead and Christmastime is no time for bad times.

Eighty-five words and blah, it's Sunday

2011-12-04T09:22:00.001-05:00

My cousin Debi, gawd bless her, wrote this on Facebook:

Heeeelllloooooooo........
So you finished your NaNo, congratulations.
Now write something dammit, we have had nothing from you for days!!!

Which made me laugh. She does have a point, though. I haven't written anything since Tuesday, when I finished NaNoWriMo. In fact, I didn't even finish the chapter I was working on that night. I wrote enough words to complete the damned 50,000-words-in-a-month challenge, then turned off my computer and haven't touched it since. Oh, I've read a few blog posts and checked the weather, and took three seconds to wish my husband a happy birthday. I also saw a photo of my son with some blonde chick on FB, and sent him an e-mail demanding the 5 Ws of Mothers:

Who is that girl?
Why is she blonde Don't you like brunettes, like your mother? Aren't they prettier and smarter? Like your mother?
WTF is she doing standing so close to you?
What the hell were you thinking, not telling your mother?
And, the classic,
She better not get pregnant or I'll kick your ass all the way to Kalabogie?

What? The last one isn't a question? Does it matter? Do mothers make sense?

But I digress.

The writing, the writing. This morning I opened up the chapter I was working on and read it. It wasn't as bad as I thought it was, so I added 75 words, then fretted some more about my son's GF, drank some coffee, made a dint in the laundry and came in the bedroom, my woman-cave writing space, obstensibly to write but more likely to contemplate the growing fuzz in my navel.

NaNo drained me. It took all my writing juice and then some. I needed a little break from it all. Also, I've been busy doing normal person stuff, like going to Christmas parties, going Christmas shopping, celebrating Dave's birthday, eating way too much food, all of that. I am sure to gain weight this Monday at Weight Watchers and no surprise if I do: Wednesday night, a big hunk of chocolate fudge birthday cake; Thursday night, chicken parmesan and pasta at East Side Mario's; Friday night, Christmas party buffet; Saturday afternoon, complete pig-out at Mandarin. Yup, I'm screwed, Weight Watchers-wise. Oh well. I had a good time. I'll try harder next week.

My friend Paula also posted on Facebook:

And we want to see photos of you in your new Christmas party dress!

Ah yes, the dress. Friday was Dave's Christmas Party, a swanky fabulous do hosted by West End Motors at Hidden Valley Resort in Huntsville. The party was GREAT. I had the BEST time. I really did. I loved talking to Dave's co-workers – it's not something I get to do often and I'm always charmed by their intelligence, their grace and their wonderful humour. The buffet was outstanding and the candy cane cheesecake was to die for. Yes, I had cheesecake, but then I danced my ass off, literally, when the dance floor opened up in all its techno-disco-pop glory. That's the thing about losing 50 pounds and exercising all the time – I COULD DANCE! I shook my booty all over that floor, almost every song. I mean, you couldn't hear yourself talk so you might as well dance, and dance I did. The only time I didn't dance was when I slurped down a Diet Coke. I felt like a teenager again.

As soon as I got in the car to go home, though, everything seized up.

"Dave," I said, "I can't move my neck." He had to do an emergency neck rubbing just so I could drive. (He had rum with his Coke; thus I was driving. I had a stiff neck. He was just stiff.) When we got home, instead of getting romantic, he fed me Tylenol, slathered me with Deep Cold and used the Orbus Forme (or however you spell that) Thumper on my back. He was at it for 20 minutes. His arm was getting sore, so he stopped.

"Oh no," I begged. "More. More!" The neighbours must have thought something wild was going on. Until the hot white smell of Deep Cold wafted through the breezeway.

I'm digressing again. The dress.

You know what? I made the mistake of looking in the full length mirror in the women's washroom at Hidden Valley. There I was, thinking I was all hot. I looked really hot in the full length mirror at the fat ladies store. I looked really hot in the little low-lit bathroom mirror here at home. But in the cold hard light of Hidden Valley I was aghast at my reflection. Despite losing 50 pounds, my arms still look like the arms on the Michelin Man. All puffy and white and HUGE. Yes, they're smaller (I don't need the extra large blood pressure cuff anymore. I don't have to lift my arm flab just to shave my armpits.) But all I could see when I looked in the mirror were two freakishly fat arms. Feckitty, feck, feck.

There was my sparkly sequinned party dress. There were my high heels and my flouncy hair and dangly feather earrings. But all I could see was my fat, fat arms.

Not to worry, though. I have a high tolerance for mirrors and a strong ability to not dwell on body image. "Feck this," I said to my fat-armed reflection. "I am going to go back in there and dance my ass off and have a fantastic time, no matter what you think."

So I did. Why dwell on the negative? Feck the negative! I went out to that party and I danced like there was no tomorrow and I had the BEST time. It was probably the best Christmas party I was ever at. And when we got home, Dave leaned in to make his move and told me I looked gorgeous.

A happy warmth spread all through me and I snuggled in close to his amorous arms and sighed and kissed him and whispered in his ear, "Get out the Deep Cold and the Thumper, baby. I'll meet you in the bedroom wearing nothing but my flannelette nightgown and a grimace."

Anyway, Paula, there are no photos. I took the camera, hoping to ask someone to take a photo of me and Dave in all of our sartorial splendour, but then forgot all about it. The good news is, I have another Christmas party this coming Friday. I will make sure I get a photo then. And don't worry, I'll make sure my fat arms are on full display so you can see what I'm talking about.

One thing about me: I have equal opportunity fat. Some women look like apples, with skinny legs and skinny arms and a rotund apple-like middle. Me? I'm like a sausage casing, from top to bottom. It's like God had a pastry bag and squeezed all the fat into my entire self, from my chubby toes to my chubby ear lobes.

But I'm digressing again. I really did want to talk about NaNo. I think that will have to wait for another day, however. A day that's not Sunday. A day when it's not gray and rainy and slow. I would like to go to a movie today. Anonymous, that flick about who wrote William Shakespeare's plays, is showing at the local moviehouse. I could get down with a bucket of movie popcorn, a bag of Twizzlers and some of the Bard.

One more thing: I'm looking at e-readers and I've heard nothing but bad things about Canada's Kobo. Apparently they go wonky really quickly and the customer service is terrible. Does anybody have one? I have a Kindle and I love it, but a number of current bestsellers are unavailable to me because Canadian copyrights for e-books are held by Chapters and Indigo. Amazon can't sell them to Canadians and Chapters/Indigo e-books aren't formatted for Kindle. Bah. So much for Free Freaking Trade.

Happy Birthday, Dave!

2011-12-01T08:14:00.000-05:00

This is why I love you.

Because you match the canoe

and you carry it, too.

At Killarney Provincial Park, George Lake, last summer.

49,160 words and a peaceful easy feeling

2011-11-28T23:19:00.000-05:00

I have this ridiculously happy feeling bursting in my chest.

It's the weirdest happy I've ever felt.

And I think it's called pride.

Tonight I polished off another 2,000 words or so in my quest for NaNo and now have only 840 words to go.

It is a pittance of words.

A flash story.

An hour's canoodling on the computer.

This marathon is so close to being over that I can literally taste it. (It tastes remarkably like chicken.)

I could finish it tonight. I could.

But I want to be fresh when I walk down the last 840 words. I want to go slow, take in the scenery, wave to my friends with their pom poms cheering me on. I want to savour the moment as I cross the finish line and then I want to do something really amazing to celebrate.

I don't know what that is because right now nothing feels big enough to celebrate this victory in the style that it deserves.

Never in my whole life have I shown this much discipline.

Never have I written so much.

Tomorrow I will celebrate a victory that is more than just winning a silly writing contest. Tomorrow I will celebrate a victory over a war that has been waged within myself.

But tonight ... I will sleep.

40,572 words and my Viagra dude

2011-11-25T07:29:00.000-05:00

Everyone gets spam, right? Comments on your blog that are trying to link you to penis enlargements or Viagra. Usually the comments are written in busted English have absolutely nothing to do with your blog post. I don't know about you but I pretty much delete spam on contact.

Something weird is going on, though.

In the last few days I have gotten a TON of comments from an address that is pushing generic drug buying online... you know, drugs like Viagra – not the kind you buy from Cheech & Chong, I don't think.

The address was spammy but the comments were actually related to the posts.

Huh, I thought, but deleted them anyway.

On Wednesday my e-mail inbox was filled all day long with comments from the Viagra dude. Really, really good comments. This guy (or girl) was not only reading the posts but was offering intelligent, thoughtful insights as well.

He wrote this regarding a post I made about a camping trip to Killarney Provincial Park:

xlpharmacy reviews has left a new comment on your post "Killarney by Canoe": wow amazing trip you had made, i remember that i made one a few years ago to the yellowstone park, was awesome we get permission to do camping, was pretty awesome to be 3 days without a computer.

He wrote this about a story about the authors of a new local book called The Hidden World of Huckleberry Rock. I was embarrassed, at the time, because the only commenter was one of the authors! But my Viagra buddy not only read the post but commented on it, too!

xlpharmacy has left a new comment on your post "The Hidden World of Huckleberry Rock": Thanks for your insight for this method great story; this is the kind of feature that continues me though out the day.I’ve long been seeking around for your webpage following I learned about them from a companion and was pleased when I was able to come across it just after browsing for a while. Being a devoted blogger, I’m happy to determine other people taking effort and surrounding to the neighborhood. I just wanted to review to exhibit my thanks for one’s submit as it is quite encouraging, and many writers don’t get the credit they ought to have. I’m positive I’ll be back again and can deliver a number of my mates.

And I had to laugh at this comment he wrote on a post about why people visit my blog. The number one reason? Because they're googling potato chip bags – I had posted an image of Lay's Potato Chips.

xlpharmacy reviews has left a new comment on your post "Popular Posts": Googling photos of potato chip bags?, are you serious? is people really looking for this on the web??

I giggled because I think it's funny that a possible spammer is commenting on what people are "really looking for" on the web.

I told my friends at work about him and what we figured is, this Viagra dude was doing what we all do when we're bored at work – surfing the Internet (well, I never do that, ahem, of course, because I am Practically Perfect and besides, I'm never bored at work because I love my work so very, very, very much).

Is this guy's actual job spamming the internet? And if it is, does the job of spamming get boring so he surfs and blogs just for fun?

My friend at work speculates the spamming business might be operated just like a call centre. But we don't know. All we know is the Viagra dude seems really dedicated to reading my old blog posts. It seems like he is methodically going through everything I've ever written. I mean, who does that? It's a blogger's dream, I guess, to have someone read all your back stuff and enjoy it. So it's all good, right?

I hope so!

What I'm hoping is my Viagra dude reads this and leaves me more information about him or herself. I'd love to know where he's from and what his job is like. I always thought the business of spamming was done by computers, not people, and the idea of connecting with someone like this intrigues me.

So who are you, Viagra dude?

Tell me everything ....

37,931 words and my writing buddies

2011-11-23T23:14:00.002-05:00

Right on the heels of telling you how hot I am, here's a photo that proves, not only otherwise, but also how little pride I actually have.

That is me deep in Nanowrimo mode, writing the Great Canadian Novel, or at least, MY Great Canadian Novel. Eight more days of writing ahead. 12,069 words. That's 1,509 words every day. Can I do it? How can I not do it after investing so much time and energy?

Am feeling confident right at this moment because I just had a good writing night. Last night, though, I was convinced I didn't have one more word in me. What I wrote was terrible. It wasn't going anywhere. It wasn't developing the plot. And it certainly wasn't well-written. Tonight I decided, to heck with it, and started writing the chapter again from scratch. This time I knew where it was headed; I had the right atmosphere and the words fairly spilled onto the page.

I asked Dave to take this picture, not to show you how chub-ugly my feet are, but to show you my undecadent writing space and my two furball writing buddies.

I've tried writing everywhere else around the house but I've done my best writing on the bed, scrunched into a back-busting ball. I goof around on my blog or facebook on the kitchen table but when I go into the bedroom and shut the door, I'm all business. Sometimes I even use ear plugs. I find it blocks everything out but the sound of my own brain thunk-thunking in overdrive.

The funny thing about this is my two cats, Dodge (the orange one) and Ben. Cats are creatures of habit and they have made a habit out of sitting at my feet while I've been NaNo-ing. As soon as the door closes they push it open and come walking in. They don't bug me. Much. Sometimes they rub their whiskers on my laptop or demand to be petted. For the most part, though, they just lie down like the slugs they are and fall asleep. Sometimes they even snore.

Is this how The Great Canadian Novels are written?

In a messy bedroom with snoring cats?

A new dress

2011-11-20T14:20:00.000-05:00

I vowed I wasn't going to buy anything else from the fat ladies store.

I was going to wait (weight?) until I was skinny enough to just buy any old thing from any old rack. But hell, I just lost 50 pounds and I've got two, count 'em, office Christmas parties coming up and damned if I want to show up with some old dress hanging off me like yesterday's potato sack.

So yesterday me, Dave and Sam went down to Barrie to my favourite fat ladies store, Addition-Elle. They actually have clothes that look like they belong to somebody under the age of 85, you know what I mean? I had been stalking their website, eyeballing up their tasty collection of sequinned holiday dresses and drooling.

The thing is, I really didn't know what size I was going to need. The last time I went shopping for clothes I was buying size 24. Yeah, I know. A big old tub 'o lard, that was me.

I started picking out dresses to try on, getting two sizes of each: 20 and 18. I knew I had slimmed down but I wasn't sure how slim was slim. Because, honestly, I want to lose a lot more weight before I'm done.

I tried on the size 18 first because I was excited and optimistic, and you know what? IT WAS TOO BIG.

Sam and Dave and a saleslady were hovering outside my dressing room. The guys were like Richard Gere to my Pretty Woman and I was giving them a free fashion show. Both of them had looks on their faces like, I'd rather be dead, but I think they were having a good time.

I came dashing out from behind the curtain in the baggy dress and shrieked, "IT'S TOO BIG!" Everyone giggled, but nobody more so than me. Usually what happened when I went clothes shopping was I kept sending Dave out for bigger and bigger sizes until he found the biggest size in the store, the Omar Tent size they kept out back for visiting circus troupes.

Not this time! The saleslady went scurrying back into the bowels of the store for size 16 in everything while I danced around in the baggy-ass dress and high-fived everyone and boasted and carried on like the obnoxious fool that I am.

She returned with three dresses in size 16 and all of them looked really, really good.

I mean, I looked HOT.

I could see the look in Dave's eye, that he was appreciating all the sequinned junk in my trunk and I thought about sending Sam off to a babysitter's for a few hours, if you get my drift...

All the dresses looked so great. I couldn't decide.

Then the saleslady said there was one more I could try (it's the one pictured in the Addition Elle ad, above), so she went and got a black sequinned strapless number. I tried it on and it was fabulous – but IT WAS TOO BIG.

The saleslady said, "there's so much extra room in the back that, if I wanted to, I could look down the back of this dress and see your underwear."

Good thing I had on decent ones.

So she went and fetched a size 14.

"No way," I sez to Dave and Sam, "that size 14 is gonna fit me. It's going to be WAY too big."
"You never know," sez Dave.

I tried it on and IT FIT PERFECTLY.

SIZE FRICKIN' 14.

THE SMALLEST FRICKIN' SIZE IN THE STORE.

"I'll take it!" I hooted.

Then I went and got some fancy jewellery and some fancy high heels. I haven't worn high heels for YEARS.

Am feeling like the hottest thing on two legs, baby.

There is lotsa sizzle in my whizzle.

There's a train a-coming and I'm hotter than a two-pistol papa.

I'm a-putting the Cat back in Cathy 'cause I'm rocking the Sex Kitten.

MEE - YOW!

29,885 words and I'm so grumpy!

2011-11-18T07:53:00.000-05:00

Dear Diary:

What on earth is wrong with me? I am SO grumpy!

I woke up feeling perfectly fine yesterday but the minute I got to work people started ticking me off. Nobody was doing everything different than they usually did – it was just me, being grumpy. Like capital G Grumpy. Like a bear with a sore arse wasn't as grumpy as me yesterday.

There's this guy at my work – let's call him Gilligan. Well, old Gilligan works in a different office than me and we hardly ever have any dealings with each other. But he has an inexorable radar for when I'm grumpy – it's the only time he ever appears in my chat window. Sure enough, I was in mid-meltdown, the highest (or shall I say lowest) point of my grumpiness, when Gilligan shows up wanting to chat. The last time we chatted I just about ripped him a new one. Today I managed some decorum. Just "yes-sirred" and "no-sirred" my way through the conversation, practically standing on my tongue. Finally he exited the chat and none too soon. He probably thinks I'm the bitch of all time; the "problem employee" who has trouble getting along with people. The truth is I get along with practically everybody but for some reason Gilligan makes my head spin around and spew pea soup.

Last night, for one of the first times since I started National Novel Writing Month, I didn't make my daily word quota. I wrote 700 or so lackadaisical, blah-blah-blah words. It would have been less painful to slash my wrists and bleed onto the page.

This morning I was grumpy with Dave, who only wanted a kiss before he went to work.

Oh man, I have a headache right now.

Like I said, I don't know what's wrong. Probably hormones, or just pure exhaustion. These two and a half weeks of NaNo, while thrillingly productive, are killing me. Even dieting is wearing me down. My whole focus this month has been diet and exercise, writing and working. Those three things fill almost every minute, from the time I roll out of bed to the time I fall in it again, exhausted.

I'm feeling discouraged, at this point.

Last week I registered a 50 pound loss at Weight Watchers, which is THRILLING, but it followed two days of fasting and laxatives in preparation for a colonoscopy. I went for the weigh-in on the tail-end of the enforced fast. I mean, wouldn't you? Why waste two days of not eating? The trouble is, my weight has crept up a couple of pounds since then, simply because my body has rehydrated. I'm being very good this week, trying to stave off the inevitable, but every day I get on the scale and see that my elusive 50 pound victory has not returned. It will. I know.

But I can't help but feel discouraged.

And I'm discouraged because I wrote a pile of shite last night. A very, very small pile of shite.

Thank goodness for this blog, my diary, my journal, my venting board.

Oh, and it snowed yesterday. It's crazy beautiful outside.

Too bad I'm too grumpy to appreciate it.

The rolling blueberries and Canadian Blog Awards

2011-11-16T08:18:00.000-05:00

You know, when you've just rolled out of that sweet, comfy spot in the middle of the double-wide, and you're plopped on the Big White Throne having that morning tinkle, the first and best tinkle of the day, and you suddenly hear an explosion of FECK, FECK, FECK out in the kitchen, that it would be wise to slither back down the hall and stealth your sorry (but narrowing) buttocks back to the sheets.

You know that – intellectually – right? But asking, "What's wrong, sugar-pie, honey-bunches?" is as irresistible as rubbernecking at a car wreck.

And thus I wandered into the kitchen in my ever increasingly baggy and attractive gotchies to see my husband crawling around the kitchen floor, cursing like a sailor with a pocketful of new cusses. He was picking up blueberries. Tons of blueberries. Two clamshell containers of blueberries, to be exact.

"The feck-feckitty-fecking things EXPLODED," he growled.

Exploding blueberries.

Huh, I thought.

I surreptitiously slunk back to the bathroom and ran some water while I hid behind the shower curtain. When the fecking and the growling was done and I heard my honey-bunny's voice say, in its regular happy tone, "Hey, where are you," I came out all casual-like, pretending I was oh-so-busy cleaning something or washing something or, you know, doing unmentionable bathroom stuff.

That's my tip of the day, people. When there's rolling blueberries and fecking in the kitchen, run like the wind. (I didn't get to be my advanced age without wind-running.)

OH. And by the WAY. The lovely Mizz Thang Laurita Miller, who is all that and a bag of partridgeberries, the Queen of all things Writerly in Newfoundland, dropped me a line yesterday to say she discovered we were BOTH nominated in different categories of the Canadian Blog Awards. Luckily we are in different categories because Laurita would kick my butt all the way to Labrador in any kind of contest. Last year she won first prize in the CBA's culture and literature category (big woots to you, Mizz Thang!) so, as you can clearly see, Laurita is a creative force to be reckoned with.

The CBAs are a voting contest. People everywhere are invited to visit the CBA website and vote in each of the many categories. If you would like to vote for Laurita, you can find her Calling Shotgun blog in the Culture and Literature category, as well as Best Blog Post. (She is very deserving in both and I have already voted for her – I hope you do, as well.)

If you would like to throw a vote my way, go to the Best Personal Blog category. There's a ton of competition in this category and it has been won by the same fellow for the last several years. So if you can find it in your heart to give this champion a run for his money, well, by all means feel free to vote for me!!!!!

You only get one vote in this leg of the competition, which closes on Christmas Eve. After that, though, the five finalists in each category will go through another round of voting. So if you really want to vote for Laurita and I (me and Laurita? I never get that straight), you can vote again after Christmas.

Thanks to Laurita and Paula and all my friends for the Facebook support. And to Liz, Kelly, John, Debi, Mandy and Debbie, who wrote amazing, touching, wonderful comments on the CBA website (brought me to tears, they did), thank you from the very bottom of my heart. Hugs to you all!

NOW, LET THE WILD VOTING RUMPUS BEGIN!

25,613 words and Fifty Pounds

2011-11-14T20:19:00.000-05:00

I'm overwhelmed, honestly, just overwhelmed. Other than having a colonoscopy, this day was as perfect as any day ever has a right to be.
I wrote more than 4,000 words this morning, bringing my NaNo word count to 25,613 words.
Tonight I went to Weight Watchers and found out I'd lost seven pounds this week, bringing my total to an absolutely incredible FIFTY POUNDS.
I have no words but my heart is as light as a feather on a spring breeze.

21,263 words and I'm freakin' hungry!

2011-11-13T18:27:00.000-05:00

I'm having a colonoscopy tomorrow afternoon (YES, ANOTHER ONE) so I haven't been able to eat anything all day. Worse, the stupid procedure isn't booked until 3:30 p.m. so that's almost another whole day where I can't eat anything.

HELLLLOOOOOOOOOO????? Doesn't my doctor realize how much I have to EAT? That if I didn't love food so much I wouldn't be going to Weight Watchers?

I think I'm going to die if I don't eat soon.

And – gak – as soon as I finish writing this I have to take the purgative that will ship everything I've eaten for the last week fleeing from my loins like it's hopped up on nitrous.

Feck, feck, feck I hate colonoscopies.

I just had one in the spring and all was FINE. I was FINE. But then I went and got sick a few weeks ago and now the doc wants to have another look. What does he think my colon is, anyway? A movie? With polyps as the starring role? With him as the director? And his probe-thing as, I don't know, Godzilla?

It doesn't help that I just wrote a chapter about corn roasts. Mother of all that is holy, I was drooling as I wrote this:

"Grandpa Bean set up several enormous pots over raging bonfires. They boiled hundreds of cobs of corn, picked fresh that day from his fields and husked by the entire family. They cooked hot dogs, too, big steaming vats of wieners bursting their skins. Grandpa Bean used a hay wagon as a giant table and it was loaded with plates of butter, buns for the weenies, all manner of condiments and bowl after bowl of homemade potato and macaroni salads, coleslaw and baked beans. Weezie loved all of it. She could eat six or seven cobs of corn at a sitting, on top of a couple of hot dogs and a can of orange pop. The butter and salt would drip down her elbows and smear all over her cheeks and she’d care not one whit. And despite being full to bursting she’d find room in the bottom of her hollow leg for a slice or two of homemade pie. Grandma Bean and her daughters and sisters all made pies for the corn roast. The hay wagon groaned with pie. Apple, lemon meringue, raisin, cherry. Just thinking about those pies was enough to provoke drooling in Weezie some 30 years later. "

Yep, let's write about hot dogs and corn on the cob when you're eating nothing but popsicles and ginger ale.

Those of you who know me will realize that I was using my grandparents' famous corn roasts as inspiration. Hazel and Charles Hooper farmed in Buttonville, Ontario, where Grandpa was the Reeve of Markham and had a lot of friends in political circles. Every year they hosted a corn roast to thank their friends and colleagues and these parties were one of the highlights of my kid year, right up there with Christmas and birthdays. It was the best corn, the best hot dogs, the best everything. It was such a pleasure to remember it today, even though I'd give my left nut right now for even a slice of dry bread.

(No, I don't actually have nuts. That is just an EXPRESSION. Gawd, sometimes people take things so literally!)

The writing, as you can see, is ROUGH. I'm just laying it down, trying to meet my daily word count and not bothering about grammar or spelling or how many freaking times I used the word "big." Just getting the words down, at this point, is good enough for me. The last few days I've been in a bit of a funk. One day I didn't write anything at all and yesterday I only pumped out a few hundred words. Thank goodness I was able to crank out 2,000 or so today. I feel like I'm back in the game.

Still, the halfway mark is coming up tomorrow and, by rights, I should have 25,000 words under my belt. That's 3,737 words by tomorrow night if I want to stay on par.

Is that possible? When my arse end has a date with Dr. Prong? We'll see. Or he'll see... he's the one with the scope.

Gotta go... have to go drink some really disgusting crap now.

(I hate my life sometimes.)

Remembrance Day

2011-11-11T08:27:00.000-05:00

I can't hear The Last Post without crying.

As a reporter I went to countless Remembrance Day services, taking photos of the veterans and local dignitaries placing wreaths on the cenotaphs while young cadets stood guard. I vowed, every time, that I wouldn't cry, not at this one, but the solemnity of the occasion always got me, always made me think.

The glistening tears of grown men, old men, tears almost freezing on their tired faces, because it is always cold on Remembrance Day, pressed a cold finger on my own heart, made their memories current and real. By the time the sobering strains of The Last Post were played the tears were falling freely down my own face, hidden behind my camera, not naked and brave like they were on the faces of the Legionnaires.

This morning there is snow on the ground, the first snow of the season.

Of course there is.

Happy at Starbucks

2011-11-10T14:49:00.001-05:00

I am so happy right now, so very very happy.

I am at Starbucks in Streetsville, which is a village within a city and it is very chi-chi. Don't tell anyone but I have a humongous cappuccino at my elbow, fully loaded with raw sugar and cinnamon and it's in a happy Let's Merry Christmas paper cup which, as I found on Twitter, John Wiswell hates (Wiswell John Wiswell "Let's Merry"? As though I needed a reason to loathe you, Starbucks.) but frankly it makes me ridiculously happy. I like following John on Twitter, by the way. He's funny.

After two days in a truck stop where I felt like I was gonna get killed any minute, I am relaxed and mellow and listening to Joni Mitchell sing abstract jazz. There are five or six other people working around me, noses buried in their laptops. One girl has pages of music in front of her. She is slender and ethnic, a student of music, with her regal long nose and her long legs and her black coffee. There's a chubby young man in a pink shirt across from me. He is earnestly wearing a Remembrance Day poppy and his MacBook Pro is exactly like mine. There is an older woman from the suburbs, sitting at a stool at the coffee bar. Her hair is like Weezie's, the main character of my novel. She is sitting on her white down-filled ski jacket. I heart her ski jacket but if I had it it would be filthy within the first hour of use. Maybe the first half hour.

There is no Starbucks where I live. No happy Christmas cups. No earnest young men in poppies or regal-nosed music students. I want to buy a mug to take home with me, to remember how creative I felt sitting with the other laptoppers, listening to Joni, eating the cinnamon-sugar foam off my cappuccino with the slim wooden stir stick, the shiv of the Starbucks set.

I am like Hugh Grant

2011-11-09T11:16:00.002-05:00

Today I am Hugh Grant in that movie Two Weeks Notice. This hotel is my home and I am running around here like I own the joint, which I do, for the next day and a half.

Except I can't, by rights, call it a hotel because it is a motel. Actually it is a glorified truck stop.

I was all excited about going to Mississauga for two glamourous days in a spa-like writing sanctuary while Dave is taking a transmission course at Chrysler and, lo, here I am in the Husky truck-o-rama, full of grizzled, leathered, tattooed truck drivers and enough carbohydrates to to float a rolling turd.

Yup, I look out my window on the fifth floor and there, spread before me like a Freightliner assembly plant, are acres of tractor trailers. The thought has occurred to me that I could go for a "walk" out in the parking lot and maybe make some extra coin. It could pay for one of those nifty polyester-fluff neck rolls they have on sale in the gift shop.

I am, however, making the Best Of It.

This morning I chose a fresh apple over make-your-own-waffles, stale croissants, white toast and canned fruit salad. Then I went to the exercise room and tried out all their equipment. Man, their bike is WAY harder than my bike. I just about popped a gasket on that one. I can just see the headline: Country Bumpkin Found Dead In Puddle Of Sweat In Tacky Truck Stop. Mother Mortified.

When I was good and stinky I staggered into the pool area, had a lovely swim with the pool all to myself, then an even lovelier hot tub with all the jets pointed at my sore bits – namely the throbbing gluteous maximus on my hiney.

Then I dashed into the truck stop store and picked up a large coffee (free for hotel guests!) and have come back to my freshly cleaned room where I am now drinking coffee and eating dry bran cereal which I brought from home. I also brought yogurt but forgot a spoon. Am thinking of chugging it right out of the squeezable container, although I'm sure Hugh Grant would send up for utensils.

I must write now. Although googling photographs of Mr. Grant is far more entertaining.

14,235 words, 43 pounds and the hunt

2011-11-08T07:46:00.002-05:00

I was all worried about gaining at the Weight Watchers weigh-in last night but I was down a pound and a half, bringing my total to 43 pounds.

I have a sort of losing buddy at WW – she has lost the same amount as me and has about the same to lose so we've made a bit of a pact. Both of us aren't even thinking of our big goal – it's just too depressing to think about. But we've got our eyes on the 50 pound prize. I was thinking last night, wow, only seven more pounds and I hit the big 5-0. Remarkable, really.

It's like participating in NaNo – I can't possibly think of writing 50,000 words in one month, but when I focus on the present I know it's possible to write 1,667 words in one day.

One pound, one word, one step at a time.

Here's another quote from my new favourite book The War of Art, in which author Steven Pressfield compares his writing day to going hunting:

"The sun isn't up yet; it's cold, the fields are sopping. Brambles scratch my ankles, branches snap back in my face. The hill is a sonofabitch but what can you do? Set one foot in front of another and keep climbing.

"An hour passes. I'm warmer now, the pace has got my blood going. The years have taught me one skill: how to be miserable. I know how to shut up and keep humping. This is a great asset because it's human, the proper role for a mortal. It does not offend the gods, but elicits their intercession. My bitching self is receding now. The instincts are taking over. Another hour passes. I turn the corner of a thicket and there he is, the nice fat hare I knew would show up if I just kept plugging."

12,112 words and 40 million calories

2011-11-07T07:47:00.003-05:00

What is up with feeling ravenous while I'm writing?

As you know I've been going to Weight Watchers for a while and I've been doing pretty good, if I do say so myself – and, of course, I do. Last week I broke the 40 pound mark – down 41.5 pounds in total since the end of July. Which is awesome, I know. But I was starting to feel I had this diet thing licked. I knew what I was doing.

Unfortunately since I started National Novel Writing Month last week I've been so hungry I could eat the arse end out of a skunk. Maybe two skunks. Those two up there are looking pretty arse-a-licious.

I sit down to write every night and, about halfway through, I am craving carboyhydrates so bad I run out of the kitchen and find the most fattening thing we have on hand. Fortunately, that's only melba toast, but still. An entire package of melba toast is not On Plan.

I thought that maybe heavy duty thinking burns more calories but, alas, apparently that's not so. I did a quick Google search this morning and found an interesting article on the Scientific American website –Science of Snacks: Why Thinking Makes You Hungry.

It's a terrific article – funny, too. But here's the money quotes, for me:

A study in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine contends that intellectual work—that’s right, I’m calling writing this stuff, ya know, intellectual—induces a big increase in caloric intake. The research had 14 Canadian students do three things at different times: sit and relax; complete a series of memory and attention tests; and read and summarize a text. After 45 minutes at each task, the kids were treated to an all-you-can-eat buffet lunch. Because Canada has a truly advanced code of human-subject research ethics.

Each session of intellectual work required the burning of only three more calories than relaxing did. But when the students hit the buffet table after the text summation, they took in an additional 203 calories. And after the memory and attention tests, the subjects consumed another 253 calories. Blood samples taken before, during and after the activities found that all that thinking causes big fluctuations in glucose and insulin levels. And because glucose fuels the neurons, a transitory low level in the brain may signal the stomach to get the hands to fill up the mouth, even though the energy actually spent has gone up just a hair. The researchers note that such “caloric overcompensation following intellectual work, combined with the fact that we are less physically active when doing intellectual tasks, could contribute to the obesity epidemic.”

Crap, eh?

And here I thought I'd be all skinny when I went to my Weight Watchers meeting tonight, because my brain had burned all these calories. In all honesty, I'm not expecting any miracles on the scale tonight. This might even be the first week I've gained. I hope not, but those melba toast do punch a wallop when you're practically inhaling them.

I'll let you know how it goes.

9,851 words and weirdness

2011-11-05T22:36:00.001-04:00

I just realized I had forgotten to update my word count on the Nanowrimo website.

Can't have that.

So I proceeded to add up what I'd written this afternoon. Part of it was finishing up one chapter and the rest was well into another chapter. I added up all the words and they totalled 1,960.

THAT'S THE YEAR I WAS BORN!

How freakin' weird is THAT?

The War of Art

2011-11-05T08:29:00.003-04:00

Are you filled with self-loathing?

Do you feel uncomfortable calling yourself a writer? Or a painter? Or whatever creative activity it is you want to try but you're numb with indecisiveness and paralyzed with fear?

That's my hand up in the air, waving furiously. Yours too?

Then you need to read the book I'm reading. The War of Art by Steven Pressfield (author of The Legend of Bagger Vance) is the best, skinniest, smartest smack in the face I've ever had the pleasure of reading. It's like a cuff upside the head. It's like Cher in Moonstruck slapping Nicholas Cage in the face and yelling

"SNAP OUT OF IT!"

I was angsting, as usual, at my writers' group meeting when my friend Dawn suddenly stood up and said, "I have a book you need to read," and she went and fetched The War of Art.

Wow, Dawn, I owe you big, my friend. This was exactly the common sense kick in the arse I so desperately needed.

The point of the book is that we human beings constantly battle Resistance, a soul-sucking internal device that stops us from doing the creative things we were born to do. This tiny tome is not a typical self-help book, which I would loathe. This is just straight talk from someone who knows what he's talking about.

Here's one of my favourite sections, entitled Resistance and Self-Doubt:

"Self-doubt can be an ally. This is because it serves as an indicator of aspiration. It reflects love, love of something we dream of doing, and desire, desire to do it. If you find yourself asking yourself (and your friends), 'Am I really a writer? Am I really an artist?' chances are you are. The counterfeit innovator is wildly self-confident. The real one is scared to death."

You can find more information about the book here, at Steven Pressfield's website.

6,525 words

2011-11-04T07:30:00.001-04:00

Good morning!

Thank gawd it's Friday. I feel that TGIF in the very marrow of my bones. One more day of working all day and writing half the night then I get to sleep in. Wow, am I looking forward to that.

I knew fitting Nanowrimo into my schedule was going to be hard on this old bird and I was right. The writing itself isn't hard – it's the pervading fatigue that's hard. Oh well. Enough whining. I get to sleep in tomorrow. I'm looking forward to writing in the daytime, not sitting hunched over my laptop until after 10 o'clock at night, then lying sleepless staring at the ceiling, too wound up and senseless to fall unconscious.

When I did sleep last night, man, did I sleep. I had the weirdest dream, too. I dreamt my friend, Vic, was trying to talk some sense into me about something. (Probably Nanowrimo!) Obviously I wasn't listening so, to get my attention, she threw water in my face. When that didn't work, she poured a pot full of cold Campbell's Chunky Chicken Soup on my head.

Oh. Talk about gross. It was slimy and, yes, chunky and you could have eaten the potato pieces off my head with a fork. I was SO MAD in my dream. There was soup all over the house! Soup pieces in the bathtub as I tried to clean up. Soup in my parents' bed (don't ask me why it was my parents' bed - hopefully this wasn't a Freudian dream). I had to strip their bed and wash it, wash the floors, wash my clothes. I woke up pissed off and exhausted from all the work.

Wait'll I see that Vic. She's in BIG trouble.

4,157 words

2011-11-02T22:21:00.002-04:00

No wooting tonight. Too tired to woot.

Still, I got another chapter done. I didn't feel like it, I swear each word was torture tonight, but the Nanowrimo pledge was pushing me forward and I managed to get the daily minimum done.

So far I'm pleased with what I'm writing.

To me it's not about the word count – it's all about continuing to write the very best that I can. The chapter I wrote tonight was a tough one to write and I think tomorrow's chapter will be even tougher. These are hard times for my heroine, the poor beleaguered Weezie Polk. It is, after all, always darkest before the dawn and Weezie's dawn is still a long way off. It's getting closer though. I have hope that soon the tide will turn and I'm getting more excited for her every day.

Get well wishes to the girls in my writing group. Poor Sasha and Dawn are down for the count and dear Paula is nursing her sick husband back from a frightening health ordeal. Linda is the only one of us currently joining me in this Nanowrimo insanity and I thank my stars that she is. Linda is ball of positive energy and the more I know her, the more I appreciate her. Take care Paula, Dawn and Sasha and good writing vibes to the unstoppable Mizz Linda.

I'd also like to say thank you to my other bloggy friends who pop by occasionally with cheery words of encouragement. It's fantastic to have you in my corner.

Kisses to you all.

P.S. My bloggy friend Denise (better known to you all as L'Aussie Writer) kindly asked me to guest over at her Romantic Friday Writers website. The topic was Friday Flash and, even though I haven't written a Flash for some time, there's nothing that warms my heart more. You can check it out HERE. Thanks Denise! Such an honour!

2,745 words!

2011-11-01T22:02:00.000-04:00

HELLLOOOOOO NANOWRIMO!

CATHY OLLIFFE-WEBSTER IS IN DA HOUSE!

Can't talk now. Am wooting around the kitchen... look at me woot, shaking my thang. See that thang? I got some junk in my trunk, baby, and it's shaking, look at that thang shake!

FIRST day of National Novel Writing Month is DONE and I have slammed 2,745 words down on that keyboard, surpassing my goal of 2,000 words. THIS, in spite of a busy day at the office!

I got involved with NaNo at the last minute, only because a couple of other girls in my writers' group (we are all girls, even though we're as old as Alan Davidson's fez, and we always will be) were signed up and I thought, yes, this is what I need to get my novel finished. A primo kick in the ass deadline with tons of moral support.

So far, so good.

Like a recovering alcoholic, I am taking this 50,000 word challenge one day at a time.

And today was sooooooooooooooo suwheet ...

Terry Fallis, you're the best!

2011-10-30T14:22:00.000-04:00

Kevin Smith, that actor and writer guy, was on TV the other day pontificating about his Big Life, taking questions from the audience.

This guy in the audience had two questions and his first one was a beauty, a dazzler. Smith answered with gusto. The guy with the question grinned ear-to-ear because he had asked a Good Question.

Then he came to question two. He was a writer too, he said. He’d been plugging away for a number of years and had never shown his work to anyone. “Would you mind,” he said, “having a look at it and telling me what you think?”

The audience, formerly eating out of the man’s hand, started booing. Smith looked discomfited.

On the chesterfield, in my living room, I writhed in embarrassment.

I had done exactly the same thing.

Not to Kevin Smith, of course, but to Terry Fallis, an award-winning Canadian author, the winner of the Stephen Leacock Award for Humour and 2011 Canada Reads, no less.

(Cringing as I’m writing this.)

Obviously I’m not the only doofus on this planet to seek validation at the expense of one’s dignity. Knowing there are others like me is not, in any way, comforting. It just makes me feel like a regular doofus. Not a special doofus.

I did my doofusying about a month ago at the North Words Literary Festival here in Muskoka. As well as fawning all over Margaret Atwood on the Friday night, I fawned all over three of the authors at an appropriately named Authors’ Forum on the Saturday night. The forum included a veritable who’s who of Canadian writers, including Richard B. Wright (Clara Callan), Claudia Dey (How to be a Bush Pilot), Charles Foran (Mordecai Richler, Mordecai: The Life and Times won the Charles Taylor Prize for literary non-fiction), Dr. Vincent Lam (2006 Giller prize winner for Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures), Gill Deacon (There’s Lead in Your Lipstick) and Terry Fallis.

The event was called “The Stories Behind The Books,” meant to give us mere mortals insight into how award-winning, successful authors get things done. So I was all about wanting to hear how they write because I am apparently challenged in that department.

I also wanted to do some fawning. Specifically, I wanted to fawn all over Richard B. Wright. We had a connection, you see. When my marriage fell apart a bazillion years ago, my good friend Mark treated me to a weekend in Toronto meant to cheer me up. Which it did. Unfortunately when his marriage fell apart a few years later, he wasn’t interested in a weekend in the country. (Can you blame him?) Anyway, while I was in The Big Smoke, I popped into a bookstore and saw a book called Adultery, written by an author I previously was unaware of, the afore-mentioned Mr. Wright. I snapped it up because my own marriage had suffered at the hands of my ex’s adultery so the topic was hot with me, to say the least.

The book was fabulous. Even though adultery turned out to be the least of the main character’s problems, and offered no insight whatsoever to my own predicament, I did enjoy the book and became a big fan of Mr. Wright who, I discovered, was FAMOUS and I didn’t realize it. His Clara Callan won him both the prestigious Giller Prize and the Governor General’s Award for Fiction. That’s what happens in Canada, by the way. You can win the country’s top literary prizes and people still don’t know who the heck you are. When I was bragging that I had tickets to go see Margaret Atwood, for example, there were plenty of people I work with who had no idea who Margaret Atwood was. Which slayed me. Knocked me over completely dead. One of Canada’s Grand Dames of literature and they didn’t know who she was. They know all about Charlie Sheen and Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory, though. Makes me wonder if there’s any hope for future generations.

The point is (yes, there is one), I was all set to fawn all over Mr. Wright. I lined up after the forum, with a dozen or so other fawners, waiting to meet him. When it was my turn I described, in bated breath, how much his novel meant to me when I was recently separated. I guess I was hoping he’d be as interested and excited as I was.

“Uh huh,” he said. “That’s nice. What would you like me to say in the autograph?”

I felt like Fred Flintstone, you know, when all the wind blew out of his sails and the tuba made a funny rumbling noise and he shrank to a mere kewpie doll size.

Oh well. I had other fish to fry. I also wanted to talk to Dr. Lam because I liked the answers he gave during the forum. He seemed approachable and he was. But when I told him I had spent all my available cash on Mr. Wright’s books and wanted to buy his but couldn’t afford it, he got a dazed, scared look in his eye and suggested the public library. No, no, I said, I’m not poor, even though I am, sort of. Things got even more awkward so I excused my self before he called security.

The other person I wanted to fawn over was Terry Fallis. I hate to admit this but I had never heard of Mr. Fallis before. After hearing what I told you about Margaret Atwood, are you really surprised? But Mr. Fallis (from here on in I’m going to call him Terry because he’s too nice for Mister) really caught my eye during the forum.

He wrote a book a few years back called The Best Laid Plans. He shopped it around traditional publishers for a year and it was thoroughly and completely ignored. Not one to be discouraged, Terry recorded himself reading the novel and released it, chapter by chapter, as a podcast. People liked it. They really, really liked it. Encouraged by their reaction, he self-published the book. Again, folks liked it.

One day he decided to enter the book in one of Canada’s top literary contests for humour – The Stephen Leacock Award. This is one of the few literary contests that allow self-published books. One of the stipulations, however, is that 10 books be sent in with the entry form. Terry counted the books he had left in his garage. He had exactly 10.

He told me at the forum that, if he had nine, he would gave up right then and there, not having the further chutzpah and will to publish more books. But he had 10 books and he had the chutzpah and he entered the contest before he could talk himself out of it.

Well guess what.

He won! Beating out major authors from major publishing houses. He won, he won, he won!

“Twenty minutes don’t go by in a day when I don’t think, ‘I won the Stephen Leacock Award.’ It never gets old,” he told me.

Suddenly publishers wanted Terry Fallis. Not too much longer after he won the Leacock award, his book was picked up by McClelland & Stewart, one of this country’s most prestigious and oldest publishers.

The Best Laid Plans has done extremely well for Terry. In 2011 he won the Canada Reads contest put on by CBC. He has already published a second book, The High Road, and his star continues to rise. Just a week ago he announced he had finished another manuscript.

It’s funny, I went from never having heard of Terry to admiring him greatly. He did what the rest of us dream of doing. He wrote a book. He was ignored by publishers. He said, “to hell with you,” and did it himself. And now he has the what must be too-delicious knowledge of knowing they were wrong and he was right.

How cool is that?

He was definitely the coolest guy at the forum. And he was nice to me. We struck up quite a conversation, me fawning, him laughing and smiling and giving me really wonderful answers to sometimes silly questions.

After talking to him for a few minutes I summed up all my courage and asked him if he ever read newbie writers.

“Yes,” he said. I think his sunny smile dimmed a slight bit, or maybe it was just Deerhurst Resort hadn’t paid their electric bill.

There was a slight pause. I spit the words out before I could change my mind.

“Would you,” I asked, “read mine?”

“Sure!” he said, dissolving me into a heap of happy bubbles.

Anybody who knows me knows I suffer from perpetually low self-esteem, especially when it comes to writing. Yes, I’ve been writing all my life, as a reporter – but that’s a completely different kind of writing than fiction. I only started writing fiction less than two years ago when I was encouraged by a blog buddy named CJ. She wrote Friday Flash stories once in a while (really, really good stories) and she talked me into giving it a whirl. CJ changed my life. The stories changed my life. I discovered I liked writing fiction and I was kinda, sorta good at it. I joined a writers’ group here in Muskoka and started mingling with people who wrote novels and I began to think about writing a book. It was so scary, though. Me? Write a book? It was almost too ostentatious to even consider.

As time as moved on, and I have continued writing, I am beginning to accept that I am a writer. I am also plodding through my novel. It isn’t easy. If anything, it’s probably the hardest thing I have ever done and every day I wrestle with self-doubt.

Sure, my friends and colleagues who have seen my work are encouraging. But I wondered how much of what they were saying was because they are my friends.

I asked Terry, who didn’t know me from Adam, to give me honest feedback.

“I want you to tell me if I suck,” I said. “I have to know.”

He nodded. He promised to be completely honest. I went home that night with a happy heart. The next morning, I sent him the first chapter of my novel and waited, heart in throat, to hear back.

In the meantime, I started reading his book and fell in love with it. He. Is. So. Funny. I dropped him a quick e-mail to say how much I liked the book and how good he is.

And, this is what he sent back.

(Cue happy music.)

Hi Cathy,

I’ve just read your chapter, and you’re good too! I really like Weezie. She’s my kind of heroine. You succeed in conveying a lot about her without just telling us. Funny too, and funny is hard. I’m a sucker for the kind of humour you’ve injected. The purple splotches on her face had me smiling and feeling for Weezie at the same time. I liked the finish too. I think you were right to end the chapter there. There’s not much more to say after the little guy loses his breakfast.

I don’t really have any criticism to impart. I quite liked what I read and think you’ve hit upon a wonderful voice. I think most readers will want to know more about Weezie and what sounds like a great ride.

My suggestion: keep writing and let Weezie do her thing...

Glad to have met you in Huntsville. Keep me posted…

Terry

WOO HOO!

I was squeeing all over the darn place when that e-mail came in. An award-winning author telling me to keep writing! My happiness ranneth over. It was just the inspiration I needed to buckle down and get my novel written. In fact, I have signed up for NaNoWriMo this year and for the month of November I will be immersed in novel-land. Forgive me if you don’t see me online much. I know this will be all-consuming. I don’t have much extra time in a day as it is and I’m going to have go give up some of my favourite things – including blogging, television, potato chips and sex – in order to find two hours a day for writing. (My kids never read my blog. They think I’m boring. Thank gawd.)

As for Terry Fallis, I am so impressed with this man. He is such a fine writer. As I’m reading, I laugh out loud – no mean trick, I can assure you. It takes a lot for me to laugh out loud at books. When he writes about his character, Daniel Addison, catching his wife with another man, I just about fell over laughing. Not usually a funny subject, but Terry made it hilarious.

I can relate to so many things he says in the book. Like this, for example: Addison lives in a boathouse. A BOATHOUSE! When my marriage fell apart, I moved into a boathouse! Who DOES that? Only me and Daniel Addison, obviously.

The other thing, one of his other main characters is named Angus. That’s my son’s name!

There are lots of other aha moments in the book but they’re not really what gets me going. It’s the writing that gets me going. The humour. The plot. The characters – all the characters are so well-written, so quirky, that they leap off the page.

This is how I want to write when I grow up.

Like Terry Fallis.

And until a month ago, I didn’t even know who he was.

I do now, though, and I’m singing his praises to the skies. Find the book. Read it. Or listen to his podcast. It’s still on iTunes and it’s still free. A bargain, for sure.

For links to his podcast and his book, you can visit Terry’s website here, http://terryfallis.com/

Thanks, Terry!

You really are the best.

The Invisible Commenter

2011-10-28T22:04:00.001-04:00

So there's this blog I like, a lot, actually (no, it's not yours) and I used to visit it all the time – happily dropping witty comments like breadcrumbs in a gingerbread forest. This blog has more commenters than cats have hairballs. And people don't just comment once, they comment over and over. Eventually the comments take on a life of their own that have nothing to do with the original blog post.

They're a family, these commenters. Close-knit, with nicknames for each other and seamless and sightless adoration for the blogger.

When first tossing my comment gems into the mix I noticed that nobody commented on my comments. I thought, OK, well, I'm new. It will take time to be one of the cool kids. Months went by. My comments continued to be ignored. After a while I thought, what am I doing here? Not that I wanted to be one of the in-crowd, not really, because I have my own cool crowd (love you guys, I really do) but it was the studious lack of involvement that made me feel like an interloper. So I stopped reading for a while.

I started again because this blog is a bit like crack and this morning I couldn't help myself: I left a comment. It was rather like sending a boy you like in school a love note to see if he loves you back. Sort of like that, I guess.

I went back tonight to see if anybody noticed.

It was there, alone, other comments walking over it and on it and through it like it wasn't even there. It was road pizza, this comment. All guts and glory in the middle of the highway while the cars go whizzing over it, its little comment face pushed up against the yellow line. Poor wee flat thing.

I don't tell my commenters here on the River how much they mean to me very often because I don't like to be all smarmy. But I really appreciate you taking time out of your incredibly busy life and reading my drivel and leaving a comment. I don't always reply because I'm geeky at replying – I always feel awkward. It's like, my blog was my comment and now I want to hear from YOU.

Do know my heart does a happy little skip when I see a new comment. Even from spammers!

But especially from you.

oxoxoxoxoxox

P.S. - I'M DOING NANOWRIMO THIS YEAR.

ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHH!!!!

Are you?

Francine's Mad Typing Skillz

2011-10-27T07:35:00.001-04:00

My friend, let's call her Francine, is the worst typist.

The. Worst.

Which is funny because she's a self-confessed computer geek who spends all day in front of a computer screen at work, then all night in front of her home computer either working, or searching for new cat videos. She knows every cat video ever posted on You Tube.

When Francine is typing, she types really loud and really fast. Everyone in the next town knows when Francine is chatting someone because her fingers are like ninjas, karate chopping the keyboard. Oh, I should talk – I type loud, too. My excuse is learning the newspaper business on an old Underwood manual typewriter. Man, you had to hammer those puppies, and then throw the return with muscles you didn't even know you had. I had a left arm like Thor. I had muscles in my crap.

With all this computer experience, though, Francine can't type to save her ass. Her typing is an ongoing joke around the office because what she's trying to say is invariably not what comes through her fingers. Sometimes you can figure out what she's trying to say. Sometimes you can't. And sometimes it's just plain funny.

Take last night, for example.

Last night I was in a baaaaaaaaaaaaaad mood. So bad, I found a picture of a growling dog and posted it on Facebook, and wrote this:

Am particularly grumpy right now but it helps to growl. Grrrrrrrrrrrr.

Right away, Francine wrote this: why so frumpy??

When I saw that, I was BUAHAHAHAHAHAing all over the kitchen. When I stopped laughing, for, like, two seconds, I wrote this: ARE YOU CALLING ME FRUMPY?

Then I was BUAHAHAHAHAHAing again, until I had to run to the bathroom so I wouldn't pee my pants.

Later on, Francine added another couple of comments, trying to explain that it is only her typing skills that suck, not her tact.

She wrote this:

you said you were grump YOU know what a bad typis I am how about a nice big glas af arm milk

A nice big glas af arm milk?

BUAHAHAHAHAHA!

People Suck

2011-10-24T07:41:00.000-04:00

What is WRONG with people?
Just now I was watching the news and saw the shocking video of a toddler being run over in a Chinese market. Not only did the driver leave the scene but, even worse somehow, were the 18 people who passed the little girl lying in the street in a pool of blood. Eighteen people! Just walked by, stepped around her, stepped over her!
Those SELFISH ASSHOLES.
What is this world coming to?
I mean, really? What is going on?

Momma Bear, the eff word and other crappy subjects

2011-10-20T08:37:00.000-04:00

Maybe eating Fibre 1 for breakfast isn't the best idea when you've had the poops for two weeks.
I'm having a Crohn's flare-up, or something. I can't get through the day without a fistful of Imodium. I know. You don't want to hear this. Trust me, I don't want to live it. Life is just shitty that way sometimes.

Speaking of stink, it's raining like stink outside. It's been raining for two weeks solid. The only good thing about this much rain is it makes you appreciate blue sky when you see it.

Just got off the phone with the vice-principal of my son's high school. I had a mouthful of Fibre 1 when I answered so I was all muffley and "bl-hell-umph-o," like that. He sounded confused at first. But it was 7:45 a.m. and I'm still in my nightie, the pink one with "Best Mom" on it that I bought for myself because my children are boys and they wouldn't set foot in a women's lingerie department. So there was a big hullaballoo yesterday morning. I was in the same Best Mom nightie (no, I never wash it, never), drinking my coffee, recovering from my latest trip to the bathroom, when I spotted this boy talking trash to my son on Facebook. This Grade Nine person must be an english major because he used the eff word extremely creatively as he invited me son to the high school parking lot at high noon to show how effing tough he is.

I'm sure he just wanted to have tea with my son. Maybe discuss the use of the eff word in modern literature, something like that. Because he insisted, in a later FB blurb, that he had no plans to beat the crap out of my son.

Apparently my son, who I love but who isn't perfect, much like his mother and the entire rest of the human population, said some very mean things to a young girl. My son said she had said mean things to him first. So we had a big discussion about not saying mean things to anyone, anyone at ALL, but especially not to a girl because, well, if you ever hope to have a lasting relationship with a woman, talking trash to them is not going to win them over. So this other kid was coming to the girl's defence, like a knight in shining armour, ready to take a round out of my son to defend her honour. Which, you know, is admirable in a way. The girl probably really appreciated it. Hey, if my husband wanted to take a round out of someone for talking bad to me, I'd appreciate it. (In a big way. Like, he'd be smiling for a week afterwards.) But I really couldn't have some kid beating up my son in the parking lot, could I? I mean, I'm his mother. It's my job to defend my children. Not just my job, my calling. I love them and, while I respect the knight in shining armour's decision to defend the girl, I can't have him laying a thumping on my offspring.

So I copied the entire conversation onto a text document and e-mailed it to the principal and then the vice-principal had both boys in for a separate visit and straightened them out. At least, I hope it's straightened out. The last thing I want is more anger, more retribution. The thing about kids today, the thing about Facebook and texting, is it's all there for the record. It's not like the old days when you could threaten someone verbally and then deny it ever happened because there was no evidence. When you threaten someone on Facebook, it's there for the world to see. You can delete it, sure, but if someone (like me) has already copied it and pasted it somewhere else, you're euchred.

And the way kids talk on Facebook? Unbelievable! The things that come out of their mouths is reprehensible. Why do they talk like that? It's disgusting! Is this something they're going to grow out of or is this next generation going to live life verbalizing like sailors? When they're grandparents, are they going to talk to their grand-babies that way? "C'mere you effing cute effer, sit your effing arse up here on your effing grandma's effing knee, you effing effer-snapper."

Anyway, that was my day yesterday. The vice-principal called this morning just to catch up and fill me in on the details, which was nice. And it was nice that he caught me in between trips to the bathroom. Tomorrow I go to the hospital for my Crohn's treatment, which is a very good thing. Cause life is too short to be this shitty.

The Wedding Crasher Ramble

2011-10-18T07:34:00.000-04:00

I do my best writing when I'm not writing at all. You should see the stuff I've never written, driving home from work. My mind ticks through the deepest, funniest truths as the wheels turn. The minute I get out of the vehicle? It stops. It's like the alarm goes off and I've woke up from whatever I was dreaming.

That picture? That's me on board the Wenonah II last Friday night. Dave and I scored some free tickets for the sunset dinner cruise from my lovely boss. Everyone else got to go for a lunch cruise a couple weeks back but I couldn't go because I was already booked off for the North Words writers' workshop. My boss, being the nice guy that he is, got tickets for me and Dave to go on our own time. Funny how time goes – I kept thinking I had weeks to use the tickets. Then suddenly time ran out and it was do or die as the cruising season drew to a close on the weekend. So, even though I haven't been feeling well lately (stupid Crohn's is flaring up), I bunged myself up with a heavy dose of Imodium and we set sail.

When we arrived at the wharf in Port Carling all we saw was a sea of really well dressed passengers. Like, suits and fancy dresses and high heels well dressed. Like, suddenly Dave and I, both wearing jeans, felt like total slobs ... me in my periwinkle Gore-Tex Pro Bass Shop fishing jacket, a bobber, lip balm, emergency lighter and half a box of Kleenex in my pockets (I really do have to clean out those pockets after our fishing trips). We had no idea there was a dress code! Turns out, there isn't, but almost the entire boat had been booked for a wedding reception. A private room on the top level of the boat had been booked by a small but rowdy group of seniors who kept ordering rounds of drinks from the harried waitress. Other than them, there were only four people on the boat who weren't wedding guests: me, Dave, and Obnoxious Legal Student and his Pretty Girlfriend. This guy, wow... where do I begin. This guy thought he was all that and a giant economy sized bag of chips. All he talked about was himself – yeah, I KNOW, that's all I do on my blog... and in real life... but I'm discussing his failure as a human being right now, not mine ... anyway, he never shut up about himself for the three and a half hours we were on that boat. It was all "law course this" and "what inspires me that" and "would you like me to buy you a cottage in Muskoka braggin" and, I dunno, he was just obnoxious. Everyone makes jokes about lawyers but, after listening to this lawyer-in-training, I could understand why. That poor woman he was with was like a deer in the headlights. I'm sure she thought she had found herself a "catch," a guy who would buy her all the fancy things in life, but at what cost? I swear her eyes were glazed over for the whole trip. She had that Stepford Wives smile pasted on her pretty face. He never asked her one question about herself. Is that what it's like, to marry for money? You give up your soul? I was tempted to push him off the boat when no one was looking, save her from a lifetime of servitude. But she'd probably just find another one. You can't help people who won't help themselves.

It took us no time at all to figure out we were in the midst of a wedding but it was a few minutes longer when two brides walked by, hand in hand, and I realized this wasn't any ordinary wedding. I heard the lawyer-dude whisper to his girlfriend that there was not one, but two wedding receptions on board. I leaned over and whispered, "I think there's only one wedding." He looked at me like I was a bug. So I raised my eyebrows and waggled them a bit in the brides' direction. "Do you see any grooms?" I asked. Lawyer-dude still didn't get it but his girlfriend grinned ear to ear and she pressed her hand to her mouth to suppress a giggle. "Oh, I see," she said, eyes dancing. Her boyfriend still looked stunned. I thought, he'll make someone a real smart lawyer some day. A real student of human nature.

So not only had we crashed a wedding, we had crashed a lesbian wedding. What an absolute trip we had! Surreal, hilarious and perfect in every way – the brides came over and introduced themselves and invited us to join in their festivities. I thought, I gotta get a picture of me with them for my blog but time flew and before I knew it we were docking again, the brides were surrounded by well-wishers and I missed my opportunity. I hate it when that happens. Life is so short. I like grabbing it by the balls and savouring every single moment.

There wasn't much to see, scenery wise, when it was dark by seven o'clock and it was raining cats and dogs outside. So we cozied up in the bar and got talking to the friendly bartender, a ginger-haired lass named Kate who wanted to know where we were from. "Bracebridge," we said. And, oh yes, she was from Bracebridge, too, whereabouts, she wanted to know. I said she probably wouldn't know it, just a little known road off into the woods along the Muskoka River and I said the name and her eyes lit up and she started laughing. "Oh, I know that road!" she said, and then told us she was our neighbour, living just down the road from us. Well then we had a merry old conversation about what a small world it is and promised to get together some time and have coffee and chat more. It was a lovely trip, and I had a couple of drinks (something I rarely do) and a slice of chocolate mousse cake (also something I rarely do) and life was very, very good.

I did well at Weight Watchers last night – down eight pounds in two weeks for a total of 39 pounds so far. I can't believe I've lost that much already (since the last week of July). I'm starting to see and feel the difference. Not too long ago I hated photos of myself. Now I look at them in no small amount of amazement. I post them without worrying about it. To someone who doesn't know me, you may look at that photo and think, "there's a chunky girl." But to me, I see smaller legs and cheekbones starting to appear in a round face. I see I have far to go but I appreciate how far I've come. I can't believe how well I'm doing – losing weight is the hardest thing for me, harder than quitting smoking, harder than anything. It takes constant attention, constant will. But the WW program is sensible and easy to follow and I know, as long as I keep my eyes on the prize, that I can be as slender as I want. One day at a time. I got an email yesterday from a relative who is struggling with addiction to alcohol and drugs. He wants a place to live, far away from his temptations, where he can clean up. After some thought I sent him the contact information for a nearby treatment centre. He wrote back that he just needed a place to stay, he could do it on his own. No, I hasten to disagree. He can't do it on his own, like I can't lose weight on my own. I need the accountability that Weight Watchers gives me. That scale, once a week, that judgement. Plus, I get support from the women at my meetings, from the leader, from the WW plan. I've tried to lose weight on my own, but I am not strong enough. Few people are. When I quit smoking, I asked for help from my doctor. I know plenty about addiction. Many people in my family have struggled with it. My own father went to a treatment centre for his alcohol addiction and you know what? It helped him. He never drank again (with one exception, just before he died, he went to the corner store and bought a bottle and had one shot, just to see how he felt about it. Obviously he didn't think much, because the rest of the bottle was untouched). If everyone could do it on their own, there would be no need for WW or AA or residential treatment centres. We need help and there's no shame in asking. I think this relative is still in denial – until he stops blaming his surroundings and shoulders the blame for the demons in his own head; until he decides to accept help, he's not ready to be clean. I think what he wants is to live with us, but I can't share my life with an addict. Can't. Won't. Been there and got the t-shirt. I don't plan on enabling anybody.

In closing this ramble, I want to express my sincere condolences to my cousins who recently lost a close friend (almost family member) to cancer. Jane was lovely and wonderful and appreciated everything life had to offer. What an incredible shame to lose her. I am so sorry. I also want to send hope to my cousin and my friend Kelly, who is fighting an equally horrific battle with post traumatic stress disorder. Kel, I worry about you every day. I think about you all the time. I want to do something to help you – I just don't know what to do other than to say you are loved, you are special, we need your spirit, your talent, your sunny laugh. Keep fighting, Kel. I'm being selfish, now, I know. But it's my strongest wish. Hugs to you and everyone in your family.

Poetry in Algonquin: Thanksgiving 2011

2011-10-15T19:02:00.001-04:00

Dark water and sunshine in the beaver meadow,
marsh grasses whistling on the October breeze.

Black woods, gnarled roots, dead things, smell of rot.
Brilliant youth, beloved and bright, dappled in sunshine and forever.
"Look at me! he shouts, his voice like music, and how can you not?

White pines, home of the beaver, Tom Thomson's ghost smiles from the pond,
mighty moose, somewhere, wandering at will.
"Boomdiddyahdah," in my head, on a loop, Girl Guides in a canoe,
skinny dipping, when it was still okay to be naked under a yellow moon.

"All the diamonds in this world
that mean anything to me,
Are conjured up by wind and sunlight
sparkling on the sea."
– Bruce Cockburn

Apple doll in the sunshine, heart light, happy.

Polka dot stepping stones for tiny creatures of the pond, bullfrogs croak their ballet.
"You're gonna drown, you're gonna drown, you're gonna drown," but the green frogs
connect the dots, slower now, slower still, their skin cold as death.

The leaves are almost done, hilltop maples are bare, only orange oak and True Grit poplars
paint Algonquin hills. Look close, though, bend down, and colour bursts from the earth.
David versus the Goliath of weather, wind and time.

Patriotism sings now, it's the distant hills that call out,
symphonies of splendour. Foolish pride swells my heart, a beer commercial on my tongue.
I. Am. Canadian.

John Wayne, Glen Campbell, Little Blackie, Little Sister, moving through the gold poplars.
It's my favourite part of that classic movie, it's my favourite part of this walk,
my men walk ahead, footsteps shifting in the sand.
I take the photo, I take a breath.
And hold.

Pay it Forward Blogfest

2011-10-14T08:27:00.000-04:00

I don't know how I get sucked into these things. I woke up this morning with no intention of joining any blogfest, then Stephen Tremp mentions I got mentioned on Laura Eno's website and I see my pal Laurita Miller is doing it and, hell, I'm nothing if not a cool-kid wannabe... so.

HELLOOOOOOOOOOO PAY IT FORWARD!

(Man, I can't stop thinking of Kevin Spacey's iron-burnt face and Twister Helen in her tight-ass jeans looking for bottles of hooch in the kitchen light and that kid, that poor sad-faced little kid who did a bunch a sad-faced movies and then disappeared into kid movie star notoriety. I'm bad at names. And way too lazy to google 'em, cause really, who the hell cares?)

So here's the deal: I mention three blogs I really really like. And then you go visit their blogs and give 'em a follow, because you will love them as much as me, I promise. Then off I go like Red Riding Hood with a pic-i-nick basket and a Yogi bear in tow, off to visit as many blogs as I can muster. If you feel the need to get sucked in, here's the link to the linky list: http://alexjcavanaugh.blogspot.com/2011/09/paying-it-forward.html

Here's the hard part: narrowing down my favourite blogs to just three.

One of my favourite blogs, very, very favourite ones, doesn't have a lot of followers, doesn't get a lot of traffic and doesn't really care. My Great White North may have eschewed popularity but its purveyor, Deb, embraces humour, photography and a love for Muskoka, the rugged, beautiful place we both call home. Give Deb a chance to win you over. She will, I promise. Since I've been blogging she has become a friend and an inspiration. You can visit her blog here: http://mygreatwhitenorth.blogspot.com/

Lake Muakoka from the vantage point of Deb's deck.
Photo by Deb or Dave at My Great White North.

If there's anybody who can make me laugh out loud, it's Siren. I've mentioned Siren Song a few times because I can't get over how crazy-funny she is. Her latest thing is posing dead, dessicated frogs (or maybe they're toads – it's hard to tell they're so mummified), photographing them and putting words in their mouth through cartoon bubbles. Ridiculous fun but scathingly, cuttingly sharp at the same time. Yesterday she blogged about her Halloween display of zombies. Gotta love her. You can visit her blog here: http://sirentist.blogspot.com/

I feel a little lax about blogging lately, if truth be told. I'm trying to write a novel (hahahahah - how ostentatious does that sound!) and all my extra time that I used to devote to blogging and writing short stories is now devoted to novel-writing. I'm no Laura Eno or Stephen King. Every chapter comes down onto the page encased in blood. So I apologize for being distant - it's not that I don't love you all... because I do. You know I do. Blogging has changed my life, gave me the confidence to write this book, this tome, this blood-spattered albatross around my neck.

Seagull Cottage by Shelagh Duffett

I have one more blog to mention and it's one I think you'll enjoy. Shelagh Duffett is an artist living in Nova Scotia, Canada and she blogs at Alice in Paris Loves Art and Tea. This blog puts a smile on my face with its colourful whimsy, the chatty conversation of its host and its remarkably happy paintings. One of these days I'm going to dust off my credit card and buy one of her paintings, just because they make my heart smile. Shelagh blogs here: http://aliceinparislovesartandtea.blogspot.com/

One of the things I most enjoyed over at Shelagh's blog was her posting of this simple song. Take a minute and enjoy... it will make your heart smile, too. I promise.

Memoir Writing

2011-10-13T08:03:00.002-04:00

Other than blithering on about Margaret Atwood, I haven't talked much about the North Words Literary Festival in Muskoka (Sept. 30 - Oct. 2, 2011), but I want to. North Words was one of the most inspiring, most fun, most fabu-lishus celebrations of the written word I have ever been to.

This year I signed up for a full day writer's workshop, the Margaret Atwood speech and an authors' forum but there was more I would have enjoyed, including a live book club, readings, and breakfasts with well known authors. Next year, for sure, I want to buy a weekend pass and go to every darn thing they've got.

When I signed up for the writer's workshop, I was more interested in the morning presentation (how to find a publisher and an agent) than I was for the afternoon (memoir writing). I only signed up for the afternoon session because I already had to book a day off work and, what the hell – lunch was included. And you know me, it's always about the lunch!

As a former newspaper columnist and a blogger, I thought the memoir writing workshop couldn't teach me anything new. I thought it might be leaden lessons for a bunch of old ladies who want to know how to write their boring life stories – boy, was I wrong. I mean, yes, the room was full of old ladies, including myself, as well as young ladies and some men of various ages; and yes, they wanted to learn how to write their life stories – but they were anything BUT boring.

The workshop was led by Cori Howard, an award-winning journalist who has written for some of the top newspapers and magazines in the country. She is the editor of the best-selling anthology Between Interruptions: Thirty Women Tell the Truth About Motherhood. Cori started The Mommoir Project to teach and inspire mothers to find their voices and inspire the confidence necessary to believe the mundane details of their everyday lives matter – and make compelling stories.

She started out by reading a few memoirs to us, including Lit by Mary Karr. The segment she read absolutely stunned me – I need to read the whole book asap. Yes, it was first person. Yes, it was a memoir, but it read like a finely crafted book of fiction, and the prose was undeniable – hard-edged, poetic and magnetic in its appeal.

Cori then talked about finding a moment, or a scene, from our own lives and how to write about our lives from the perspective of that scene. She gave us a half an hour or so to write something and then some of us read our stories out loud.

I was obnoxious – I know, hard to believe. But I was so excited about what I had written down that I started waving my arm in the air when she wanted to know who wanted to read first. Picture Arnold Horshack from Welcome Back Kotter and you get the idea. Other people were also excited to share what they had written and everyone was excited to hear what they had read. Laughter rang out through the Huntsville Public Library as funny bits were read. Tears were shed at other parts. By the time the afternoon was done, everyone felt a new closeness as well as a confidence that, hey, we could do this.

Cori's right – everyone does have a story to tell. Many stories, actually. All it takes is a little direction and inspiration to get them on paper.

Because I really am like Horshack, here's what I scribbled down:

It’s a wonder I don’t fantasize about the Maytag repairman. Not someone who goes ga-ga over a man in uniform, perhaps that’s the reason; maybe it’s also because Gordon Jump is the actor who is playing the latest Maytag man in the TV commercials, and I can’t think of Gordon Jump without thinking about the dumbass character he portrayed on WKRP in Cincinnati.

No, it’s not the Maytag man that keeps me coming to the big white boat of an appliance hulking in the back corner of our little log house. It’s the dirty socks and underwear that seemingly breed in the washing machine’s presence. My husband and two sons are veritable factories of filthy laundry.

Diesel oil, road dust and gasoline on Dave’s once-navy-blue work coveralls, the ones with “Angelo” on the embroidered nametag because, when he started working at the Huntsville Chrysler dealership three years ago, the woman who ordered work clothes ordered the wrong name. I don’t know how she mistook Dave for Angelo, but she did, and while she has been promising for three years to get Dave his own name on his own shirts, it hasn’t happened yet.

So I wash Angelo’s coveralls, and hoodies out the yin-yang from Angus and Sam. It’s all they want to wear. Hooded sweatshirts, even in the sultry thick of a mid-summer day. The hoodies belonging to Angus, who is 14, come back to me and the Maytag smelling vaguely of goat. It must be a teenage thing, this heady goaty aroma, a mixture of B.O. and, gawd, I don’t even want to imagine what else. I remember my boyfriends all smelled the same way. When I was 14, I thought it was sexy. Not so much, anymore. Sam, who is still only 11, has hoodies that smell clean, like fresh air, like sunbaked sand.

I inhale this 11-year-old hoodie fragrance, so beautiful it should be bottled, because I know that some day soon, it will change. I am tempted some days not to wash it, to put it away in a bottom drawer, to keep it as a sweet vestige of a time before everything changes, for good, and forever.

Just wondering

2011-10-11T18:04:00.001-04:00

I always cry on my birthday.
Do you?

I'm Alive

2011-10-10T20:35:00.000-04:00

Barely.
Everything hurrrrrrrrrrrrts.
This was the best Thanksgiving. The weather was fantastic. I mean, middle of July fantastic, except that the temps got down to zero Celsius at night but the skies were blue and the sun was shiny and the leaves in Algonquin Park were at their most fabulous.
But oh, I am a hurting unit. Three solid days of biking and hiking has jellified these old bones and now I am salivating at the thought of a hot bath and a handful of extra strength Tylenol.
Tomorrow marks the end of my 50th year and I have much to be thankful for as I say good-night to another Thanksgiving Day. A year ago I couldn't have imagined myself biking all over one of the most beautiful places on earth in my baggy-assed sweat-pants, looking for moose and bear, and passing 11-year-olds in a single bound.
I have so much to tell you about but it has to wait, it does. I just wanted to let you know I'm alive and well and looking for the heating pad.
And tomorrow?
Tomorrow I eat cake.

Meeting Margaret Atwood

2011-10-01T08:33:00.002-04:00

Those eyes. Those dazzling clear blue eyes; maybe blue; maybe grey. Maybe both.

I can’t stop thinking of Margaret Atwood’s eyes.

When you see a photograph of her, on a book cover or the internet, you notice them right away, because you can’t help it. They’re stunning.

But when you meet her, and she’s sitting down only a couple of feet away, signing a book, it’s her eyes that draw you in. Those eyes, the ones that stared back at you from books since high school, now trained on your own imperfect self, and you think, when you can rustle up a lucid thought, “I am in the presence of Greatness.”

Rarely do you live in the moment, despite Oprah’s constant urgings to do so. But last night I did. Two minutes. Or so. The stage lighting at the Algonquin Theatre in Huntsville, Ontario, shutting out the hundreds of people lined up behind me, books clutched to their hopeful chests, like schoolgirls, shutting out their distractions, pooling Canada’s greatest writer, Canada’s most iconic author, and me, in a shroud of stillness.

“For Cathy,” she began writing in the book I had just purchased, “In Other Worlds,” her newest book, so new it won’t even be officially released for another week.

I wanted to ask her something.

“With best wishes,” she continued to write.

I leaned forward. She was just finishing “Margaret” when I blurted it out.

“Did you ever doubt your writing?” I asked, because that is what is in my own writer’s heart. “When you were starting out?”

She signed “Atwood,” with a messy flourish, and turned those amazing eyes up to meet mine.

I was struck by her resemblance to one of Canada’s most beloved prime ministers, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, her curly hair, her clear, almond-shaped eyes; but also to my friend Mark’s mother, Mary Champion, a historian, a woman of intelligence. I was struck by the feeling that I knew her, that I had always known her, yet I knew nothing at all. Most of all, I realized that I was meeting a living legend and what I really wanted to know was, what is it like being this legend, this icon, this Atwood person?

Instead, I listened to her answer.

Our gaze locked for a moment. She seemed to choose her answer carefully, or maybe she was just sizing me up. Her voice was measured, throaty, as remarkable as her eyes, actually.

“No,” she said. “In those days I worried mostly about who was going to publish it.” At least I think that’s what she said. And she said more, of course, all kinds of interesting things about the publishing world when she was beginning her writing career. It’s just that, as soon as the words left her lips, as soon as they reached beyond the pool of stage lighting, they were as lost to me as if they had never been said.

And then, oh then, I interrupted her.

I did.

I can’t believe it.

I actually interrupted her, in mid-sentence, to say something inane about the many people who were lined up behind me, and not wanting to take up too much more of her time, but would you mind having a photo taken with me for my blog?

I am such an ass, sometimes.

There was a split second where my ineptness seemed to startle her. Then she asked me to come behind the table and stand beside her. As Dave took two photos, I joked about making me look skinny. She joked back (she is very, very funny), then she asked me what my blog url was, and wrote it down on a yellow sticky note. She wondered if I would let her know when I posted the photo, and my heart did a fast soprano trill, and I told her I followed her on Twitter, and how much I loved her Tweets, how funny she was.

“I’ll tweet you when it’s posted,” I said.

“That would be great,” she replied.

(Me and Margaret Atwood. Talking about Tweeting each other. Un. Bee. Leeeeavable.)

Before I left her side, before I stood up straight and walked off the stage into the chilled evening of the last day of September, before all that, I whispered in her ear, with such grave reverence that it almost brought me to tears, “It was such a great honour meeting you.”

I straightened up and those incredible eyes met mine one last time.

Then the next person came up and I walked away.

In the Air Tonight

2011-09-29T18:53:00.000-04:00

The turn is on the cusp.

The fall turn, when there is a noticeable shift in the air, in the river, in the way we think.

As it is on our lakes, where temperature and weather's weird alchemy turn the water on the bottom over to the top, flip it like a pancake, pushing the sour suffocating depths into the sun and forcing fresh water down to the muddy bottom for scaly wintering creatures, so too is it in the air; in the trees. In our thoughts.

Kiosk Fall 2011 and Bear Poo

2011-09-26T07:44:00.000-04:00

Got an e-mail from my friend Alan in Newfoundland who wondered why I've been so quiet lately. I've been fishing, Alan! Dave'll tell you – I haven't been quiet, I've just been noisy in a different, internet-free place.

Kiosk is one of the northernmost camping areas in Algonquin, one of Ontario's most famous and largest provincial parks. The are no roads into its vast interior, just a loose waterway of canoe routes, lonely dark lakes and black forests. The bottom end of the park has a highway and several campgrounds running through it (we go to one of those campgrounds regularly, Lake of Two Rivers), but there are really only two campgrounds in the north part, Brent and Kiosk. Both are at the end of long dirt roads stretching through Crown land. Both are former sawmill and railway villages, now ghost towns with only foundation remnants as clues of once thriving communities. And both are launching points for adventure-seekers looking for true wilderness experiences.

While Dave and I have camped in the interior, our trips to Kiosk are far more comfortable. We bring our trailer and our aluminum motorboat and spend four days every spring and every fall looking to catch and release some big fish, spend some time together and catch our breath. No jobs, no kids, no pressure.

The weather was downright terrible. Grey skies and rain the whole time we were there – except on Sunday, when it was time to pack up and leave. Oh well. We've never let the weather put a crimp in our style. We fished, we rode our bikes, we read our books, we played cards. We celebrated our first wedding anniversary in a place we have both come to love as much as we love each other.

I took this picture to show you the difference between water levels in the spring and in the fall. This past spring we couldn't get under this bridge because the water was so high. Last weekend the water was so low there was barely enough water for our boat – the difference is at least four feet. The bridge, by the way, is part of the abandoned railway line built by lumber baron J.R. Booth in the 1800s. It's the main reason Brent and Kiosk existed, with sawmills cutting up the rich forests of Algonquin and shipping them, via railway, all over the world. Before Algonquin was cut bare of trees, it was mostly giant pines and spruce that grew here. The regrowth has brought maple to the park, making Algonquin a gorgeous place to be in the fall.

Normally you would never be able to perch on a rock in the rushing Amable du Fond, the river that connects Algonquin's northern lakes: Kiosk, Manitou and Tea. We've never seen the river so quiet but took the opportunity to walk up the waterfall and take some photos. Dave brought his line and tried to wangle a brookie onto his line but even the fish thought there wasn't enough water.

This was my fish, a nice 4 pound bass. Dave, of course, did fish holding duties, baiting the hook duties and looking good in his rain suit duties. I did all the real work, wrestling that beauty in, kicking and screaming. We posed him for a pic, than he flicked his tail and disappeared into the water.

Dave also caught a nice bass - not as nice as mine, though. .. jest saying...

And a trip to Kiosk just isn't complete without a lake trout. Dave was happy to snag this one.

Isn't this ridiculously cute? I know. You should have seen her waddling around in it.

When I was taking this photo I couldn't see Misty in the viewfinder – she completely blended in with the orange leaves and dark water of the Amable du Fond waterfall.

Because my friend Linda requested it, here's the bear poop in our front yard. Yup, we went all the way up north to see wildlife and we come home to see that a bear had ripped down our bird feeder and then crapped in our front yard. Linda, you can see the pitts of the choke cherries the bear had been eating. Judging by the freshness, the bear had been there within the last day. And judging by the size, it was a BIG bear. For ages we were under the false impression that there were no wild animals in our neighbourhood, other than a few foxes, raccoons and skunks – but now we know there are bears so we have to be a little more careful. We did see some wildlife in Kiosk – on our way there we had a rabbit run right towards our vehicle – Dave had to swerve to avoid it. The hare had eyes as big as saucers. A little bit down the road we saw the reason why: a fisher hunting it. "Run, bunny, run!" we shrieked out the window. Dave honked the horn and scared the fisher into the bushes. We hope we gave the bunny enough of a break to survive.

Our busted bird feeder with poo in the background.

The top of the feeder the bear had ripped off.

The wire that had held the feeder until the bear decided to have a closer look.

Be right back

2011-09-25T17:55:00.000-04:00

Excuse me while I go take a picture of bear crap on our front lawn.
Won't take but a minute.
Dave said, "Go take a photo of the bear crap before it gets dark."
It's a sentence you don't hear every day.
Be right back.