Have you ever noticed that sometimes the horoscope in the paper is spot-on and sometimes it misses the mark by a mile? Well mine has me worried.
For about a week now, astrologer Eugenia Last has been telling me, and all other Aquarians, to watch our backs. The messages say we shouldn’t let ourselves be talked into anything we don’t want, to not allow anyone to manipulate us, and yesterday, not to trust anyone with our secrets.
A day of being told someone is out to get me is bad enough, but after my Incredible Adventure on my Paper Route the last week, and the comments that I just may be on my own version of the Truman Show, I’m starting to get a little paranoid.
Here’s a random picture, to throw off whoever’s out to get me
Bitcoins. Have you heard of them? I just did today, when I read yesterday’s newspaper.
According to the news, the first-ever-in-the-world Bitcoin ATM is opening today in Vancouver, British Columbia. The way it works is, you scan your palm on the machine (quite literally “wave” – see what I did there?) and you can then put as much as $3,000 into your Bitcoin account, or “wallet.”
Sounds easy enough, but then I wanted to know how one spends all this money. The answer: on the internet! Apparently, WordPress accepts Bitcoins. (I haven’t looked it up, I’m just going by what the news says.) But how does WordPress know that the Bitcoins I’m spending are actually my Bitcoins? After all, a palm scanner isn’t a regular household appliance….yet. So I decided to google “How does a Bitcoin work.” I got this: Bitcoin: How it works, which didn’t help me much at all. On first glance it looks a little bit like PayPal. I lost it at the map. Check it out for yourself.
If this system of Bitcoins doesn’t fall flat on a wave of confusion, it just might end up what separates the middle-aged from the youth of today. My mother can’t use a debit card – can’t understand the concept. Maybe this is where the youngest tip of the baby-boomers like me get to wave bye-bye to Generation X.
For most of us it begins with eye-bulging denial. “No way!” we exclaim, or “You’re kidding!” Then comes the numbness of confusion. “But how can s/he be dead? I grew up with her/him!” If we were a true fan, the tears might sting our eyes as they well up. And slowly, sometimes over the space of minutes, sometimes years, we accept it. That star we never really knew, we’ll never ever know, has passed outside the reaches of Earthly pursuits, and into the realm of legend.
We listen to their songs again, or watch their movies; gaze at their art or read their words, and we wish beyond all reason that it wasn’t so.
Lou Reed, and all of those who have gone before you, may you rest in peace.
I can’t believe I’ve been this wordy in the space of nine months. 🙂
So to celebrate my 200th blog post, I’m going to do a few random things.
First, a pretty picture. I took this about five years ago, in Gatineau, Quebec:
Second, I’m going to ask anyone who is participating in Nanowrimo this year to join me as my writing buddy. I’ve never had one in the ten years I’ve been doing Nano and I already have three this year. It seems a good idea to have as many as I can – I’ll need all the encouragement I can get with all I have going on. If you’d like to join me, look me up. My user name at Nano is “schvell”.
Third, I need some advice. I’m thinking about changing my theme, but I was wondering – does it throw you off when someone’s site looks drastically different all of a sudden? Will you still visit if you don’t recognize the decor?
That’s all I can think of at the moment. So, dear friends, and readers I haven’t met yet, enjoy the rest of your Sunday, and thanks for visiting!
It’s happening everywhere – the big box stores move in and Main Street shuts down. Woe to the little guy; the family who spent generations building up a business watches helplessly as it falls flat in the face of Wal-Mart. Even Zellers, a staple in the Canadian landscape of department stores, where things could be had for relative cheap has, quite literally died as a result of being a target – the stores that didn’t close up became Targets.
While we, as the consumer, are reminded that these ‘little guys’ are struggling, it’s difficult to resist the lure of the mall, or the big bright flyers of the giants. Christmas, the season that should be a boon when it comes to surviving the costs of running a shop, is no longer a source of greater income. After all, if we have the choice between walking around an enclosed space to find everything we need, rather than wading through slush and braving the cold to go from store to specialty store, the solution is rather a no-brainer, especially if we have kids in tow who would prefer to go to Toys ‘r’ Us.
In yesterday’s newspaper, there was an article about how my city is encouraging retailers to open up shop in the over-abundant real estate that sits vacant along our main drag. In the interest of keeping the 99% of us from going under, this may be only a small thing to consider… or is it?
I think more needs to be done about keeping the ‘little guy’ in business all over North America. Is your city doing anything? Are you? I’d be interested to hear.
The article in yesterday’s newspaper that caught my eye was about a community group which takes disabled adults (over age 16) on outings. The sentence in the article that sparked my interest in particular said, “Without our programs, some of these individuals would be staying at home so it helps reduce the risk of isolation for the parents and caregivers as well as the participants.” That got me thinking.
The first thing that comes to my mind when someone mentions ‘caregiver’s isolation’ is simply the fact that when they’re stuck at home caring for someone who is disabled, they just don’t go out. But it goes so far beyond that.
As a parent of disabled children I find it hard to have discussions with parents of “normal” children, because we have so little in common. Even people who aren’t parents of kids the same age as mine (for instance, if they’re grown up and moved out) have a hard time relating to me. Whether they assume because my kids aren’t like theirs, they can’t possibly have any of the same tendencies, or whether they’re afraid of being told that their problems can’t possibly be as bad as mine, I”m not sure. Maybe it’s both. Therefore, I try not to talk about myself much. When they are kind enough to ask me about myself, no matter how nonchalant I am about the way I live, telling anyone about my kids is a slow death towards being a conversation stopper. Occasionally they’ll mention a niece, or a neighbour who has a similar circumstance, or they’ll ask me questions about the health of my children, but when I’ve said all there is to say, if I don’t quickly find something other than the weather to talk about, (and it’s always up to me to find something, because no one knows quite where to go after being told about my kids) then it’s game over. In fact, come to think of it, it shuts people up about as fast as telling a stranger I’m writing a novel. Think about that for a while.
Having said all that, I’ve been invited out tonight with my next door neighbour and six of her closest friends for dinner, none of whom I have met before. As long as I can keep the conversation away from my kids, I should be fine. But of course someone is bound to ask me what I do for a living…
My point is, the isolation parents and caregivers of the disabled experience isn’t necessarily as clear-cut as it sounds. So next time you come across a single, stay-at-home mom of disabled children, or a novelist for that matter, don’t be afraid to look beyond what’s apparent.
I had a hard time coming up with anything inspirational in yesterday’s paper, until I decided to put my dubious organizational skills to use. A headline which reads, “Have you planned for illness?”, mashed together in my little brain with a picture I took the other day, gave me the following idea:
What do you do when part of a tree collides with your house?
Are you a natural born handyman/handywoman?
…handyspider?
Owning a home is great, but the number of things that can go wrong is spectacular. If you’re like me (single and totally inept when it comes to anything more complicated than taking out the garbage) then you have to pay someone to fix anything that goes wrong. And when the boiler starts to leak all over your basement floor? (Hint: the water is supposed to stay inside the system.) You spend the next six years paying for a new one, like I am.
Easy to squash or not, there’s something to be said for being a squatter, like my little eight-legged architect/do-it-yourselfer.
Okay. I’m going to describe what happened to me today as best I can. I drew a diagram to help out.
So yesterday – I have to start there – I was on my paper route, waiting for cars to pass so I could cross the street. (That’s me, the stick figure. In real life I wear clothes when I deliver the paper.) To my right (near the red box) the mailman, who I rarely see, was waiting as well, to go back to his van (the poorly drawn grey thing with yellow windows and black wheels.) He waved and I waved back. So I got across and came down the adjacent street and met one of my customers who was getting into his (orange) car. We spoke for a moment – weather’s getting colder, that sort of thing. Before I could cross the street again, I had to wait for the blue pickup truck to pull into the driveway (as shown. Yes, that is supposed to be a pickup truck. I never claimed to be an artist.) I then proceeded on my merry way.
Here’s where it gets freaky.
Today, I’m standing in the exact same place, waiting to cross the street when the mailman pulls up and gets out of his van. I wave, he waves back. We sign (he’s Deaf) about the coincidence of having met in the same place two days in a row. That was weird, I think to myself. So I go down the next street and there’s my customer is getting out of his car. We exchange pleasantries – it’s even colder today than yesterday, etc. etc. I cross the street and guess who is backing out of his driveway… the guy in the blue pickup. I go along my merry way, thinking, what the hell?
What is it, opposite day today? I’m sorta glad I didn’t win the lottery yesterday…
I’m inspired – not by the article on the front page of the paper yesterday, but by its headline: Focus on those who inspire.
I can’t count how many times in the last month I’ve been asked the question, “What inspires you?” This question was my first assignment in my short story course and it continues to come up. Like here: on Opinionated Man’s blog just today.
My answer is ‘everything.’ All people, all things. There is nothing that can’t inspire me if I am in an imaginative mindset. And that leads me to a question for anyone willing to put forth an answer. If you consider the fact that you potentially inspire someone, does it make you want to be on your best behaviour?
Personally, I don’t think it should. After all, if everyone was always nice, pretty, clean, healthy and polite, we wouldn’t have antagonists. If our homes were always neat and tidy, would we be able to come up with a trash heap for a setting? If we all believed in the same things, would we be able to imagine strife?
Conflict is what a good story is made of. We NEED people to be at their worst once in a while. Misery, while not something most of us strive for, is necessary for the well being of the written word, as is sickness and death. Beauty is nothing without ugliness. Yin cannot exist without Yang and vise versa.
Think about it. What interests you? Conflict. Happiness that has overcome defeat. The struggle…
I can be inspired by a rock if it’s in the way, or if someone trips over it, because it’s all about the human interaction for me. It’s even better if, whoever trips over it swears like a sailor. Yes, I can be inspired by a scenery. But without life, it’s only a scenery.
What inspires you? Or, better yet, WHO inspires you?
In other news, the tree formerly known as Nosehair is sporting a fancy new orange eyebrow
Ah, the innocent narcissism of a child. Not to be confused with the pathological sickness found in some adults, we are born with a strong sense of self-preservation, and it’s not until we grow that we realize our own needs aren’t all there are. I wonder where we cross over. Is it the first time we see our own mother cry? Somewhere, somehow, compassion becomes a part of our psyche, and that’s where the narcissism of childhood ends.
However, on days like today nothing matters to my son, Alex, except Alex. My baby turns thirteen years old today and he’s extremely proud of himself. It’s delightful to me to see him bask in his own glow. It was beyond my wildest dreams when he was born that he’d ever reach this milestone, and so I’m happy to make his every wish come true.
Alex ‘n’ Me
Four foot two, and sixty pounds, he’s a dynamo of enthusiasm and love for everyone around him. In his mind he is as small as his frail physique; as much as his physical age is telling him he needs independence, he still comes to mom for cuddles when something hurts. He retains that childish innocence – that me me me mindset, and yet he’ll pat me lovingly on the cheek if I say I have a headache.
I have no idea how long his childishness will last… I have no idea what to expect of tomorrow, but I do know one thing: Today, nothing matters but my baby.
