Life in progress

Category Archives: Life


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Stream of Consciousness Saturday – Finding Flounder

Aside from the fact that I can’t usually find a thing I’m looking for in my house if I haven’t seen it in the previous two days (okay, that’s an exaggeration, but the frustration makes it feel that way) most of my lost things lately have been inside my own head.

Concentration. It’s what it all comes down to. Having a thousand things go through my head at once (disclaimer: this post will include many exaggerations. And by many I mean about a million or so.) is conductive to forgetting everything. For instance, twice this morning on my paper route I walked past a house I was supposed to deliver to because I have my novel in my head. A particular scene that I’ve been pondering… can’t remember now which one…

Too many people to take care of, (the last of which is ALWAYS me (exaggeration)) too little money to do all the crazy things my kids demand of me (i.e. taking the bus to the mall which costs $500 each way compared to driving the car which costs only pennies) (guess which one of those is an exaggeration. Right. The pennies one.), and where was I… Oh yeah. Not having enough time to write and edit, and read and CREATE! That’s gotta be the worst because it’s what keeps me sane. So I create in my head while I’m supposed to be doing other things. Like delivering the paper. And running red lights. And floundering around like a beached fish, gasping for air and dying… dying … dyin… dyi… d.

I’m such a drama queen this morning. Time to find some sense in it all.

 

Badge by: Doobster at Mindful Digressions

Badge by: Doobster at Mindful Digressions

This post is part of SoCS. For the prompt and everything you need to know to join in, click here! https://lindaghill.com/2014/10/03/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-october-414/


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In Praise of Carrots

As some of you may have read here in recent months, I’ve been having ups and downs with my eyesight of late. For weeks I get up each morning and have to squint to see the computer screen. On some of those days I found an improvement after a couple of hours but other times it would last all day. Then, suddenly, it would get better for a while and I could see as well as I did a year ago.

Over the weekend my eyesight began to get progressively worse, resulting in yesterday having to wear my distance glasses just to walk around the block so as not to strain my eyes too much. I assumed it had something to do with screen time. But then it occurred to me.

Carrots. I eat them daily for a while but then I stop. So yesterday afternoon, after my paper route was done, I had about half a dozen raw baby carrots, and this morning when I woke up I could see my computer screen. Without squinting!

I always assumed it was an old wives’ tale to get kids to eat their carrots: “Eat ’em,” my mother used to say. “They’re good for your eyes.”

Who knew it was true?! I’m such a happy bunny today! 😀


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10 Random Whys

1. Why are people surprised when they get a groan instead of a laugh at the end of a joke? It’s called a PUNCHline after all.

2. Why can’t I kiss my own elbow?

3. Why are there so many fruit flies in the world when there’s nothing to eat them?

4. Why do the things that are so bad for us, taste so good?

5. Why must our faculties go to pot as we get older?

6. Why does a bottle of water cost more than the same amount of gasoline?

7. Why can’t we just all get along?

8. Why do we call flies flies, and yet there’s not a bug called a “walk”?

9. Why do men have such a hard time asking for directions?

10. Why are there not more hours in a day when we need them?

 

One point for every question you answer. Bonus points if you can come up with another “why” question for me to answer.

Aaand GO!


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Update on a Weirdish Week

First, I’d like to say hi and welcome to my new followers. I appreciate your interest in my blog, and I promise to come and visit all of yours the moment I have a chance. I’ll put a few pertinent links in this post so you can keep up with the rest of the class. Here we go.

I have no clue why I posted not one, but TWO one-liners today. Okay, I do have an idea – WordPress wouldn’t let me not schedule the one I had scheduled, and when I tried to change it to next week I must have messed up. If you haven’t read them both, you probably should. Each have links to other people’s one-liners. There are some great ones this week!

Then this afternoon I was contemplating life and dreams and things when I came up with a great concept for a new novel! Only I’m not going to have time to write it. Editing is slow-going these days, even though I’ve been working on it every spare minute I have to sit quietly. Only 50 pages to go out of 524. 😀

I’m still searching for the perfect sleeping companion. I’ve tried a few but none have worked out. I can tell you, it’s frustrating having a different one every night of the week and never finding the satisfaction I was hoping for!

My doctor’s appointment went… okay. She’s going to get the records from my old doctor’s office to see what my x-ray and ultrasound from last May said about my right shoulder, but she doesn’t want to give me any exercises to do until she knows. The last idiot doctor said, “Just stretch.” He also said it was arthritis, but the symptoms don’t fit. So I have to wait for another month before I get any results.

On top of that now, I had a hellish weekend with Alex and had to move all the furniture except his bed out of his room, by myself, because he was smashing it and putting dents in the walls. Mostly, I didn’t want him to hurt himself. So what happened? I hurt the other shoulder.

BUT, I had this weekend to look forward to. The kids were going to go to their dad’s… but wait! He’s sick and so are the rest of his family! So no break. He offered to take them anyway, but with the new super-bug that’s going around, I don’t need to take the chance that Alex will end up in hospital like when he had H1N1… or when he had pneumonia… or RSV… or bronchiolitis… or… you get the picture. I did however manage to wrangle some hours out of my eldest son for Sunday so I can do the backstage tour of the National Arts Centre in Ottawa. I’ll take pictures!

And speaking of pictures, it was Alex’s picture day at school on Monday. He looked so dapper I couldn’t wait for the official photos. This was taken before school.

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He came home, however, with his shirt untucked and done up one button off, and the knot on his tie reaching his breastbone looking much like a drunken businessman.

Kids. 🙄

So that’s been my week. How ’bout yours?


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One-Liner Wednesday – Self-Consciousness

There’s nothing more angst-inducing than meeting an old friend after 30 years when you’ve gained x number of pounds…and aged 30 years.

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Anyone who would like to try it out, feel free to use the “One-Liner Wednesday” title in your post, and if you do, you can ping back here to help your blog get more exposure. As with Stream of Consciousness Saturday, if you see a ping back from someone else in my comment section, click and have a read. It’s bound to be short and sweet.

The rules that I’ve made for myself (but don’t always follow) for “One-Liner Wednesday” are as follows:

1. Make it one sentence.

2. Make it either funny or inspirational.

Have fun!


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One-Liner Wednesday – NaNo?

Answer to the question, “What am I going to do in November?”:
“Well, you could grow a moustache, but writing a book might be easier.”

Thanks, John.

__________________________________________________________________________________________

Anyone who would like to try it out, feel free to use the “One-Liner Wednesday” title in your post, and if you do, you can ping back here to help your blog get more exposure. As with Stream of Consciousness Saturday, if you see a ping back from someone else in my comment section, click and have a read. It’s bound to be short and sweet.

The rules that I’ve made for myself (but don’t always follow) for “One-Liner Wednesday” are as follows:

1. Make it one sentence.

2. Make it either funny or inspirational.

Have fun!


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A Rant

I am officially ashamed of my job. The organization that prints and distributes the local newspaper that I deliver–that people pay good money for–needs to take a good, close look at itself and its practices. It’s no wonder subscriptions are on the decline. I’ve gone from having twenty-three customers to thirteen in the three years I’ve been doing the job.

Today, however, takes the proverbial cake.

The article in question (no, I won’t cite it for the following reasons:  a) I don’t want to advertise publicly where I live; b) the article is conspicuously absent from their website anyway; and c) I still work for them. For now.) is about a recent awareness-raising campaign entitled “Slut Walk.”

The annual Slut Walk, if you haven’t heard about it, is a tool to teach people (men mostly) that dressing like a slut isn’t an invitation for sexual assault. This, in and of itself, is a reasonable lesson to learn. You can read more about it here: http://www.slutwalktoronto.com/about/how if you’re interested.

But it’s not the Walk itself that I have a problem with – it’s the article.

Apart from numerous grammatical errors, (“you’re” instead of “your”? Come on!) which point blatantly at the fact that if an editor even read through the article he needs to be fired clean out of the editorial cannon, there are the questionable quotes from the event’s organizer, in which she states that the word ‘slut’ need not be a bad word, and that, “It just describes someone that is sexually promiscuous, someone who is maybe for work or for personal reasons and that is not a bad thing.”

Then she goes on to say people are complaining that the Walk isn’t child-friendly, but that, “…there is not a whole lot of scantily clad people…” this directly below a picture of a woman with the middle of her t-shirt cut out, revealing her bare breasts (and no, it’s not edited) and then, “…I think there is only one sign with profanity…there is nothing here that you wouldn’t see on TV or hear on the radio.”

Where is anything child-friendly about this scenario? On one hand you have a legitimate message – clothes don’t invite rape – and then on the other hand you have a newspaper quoting an organizer saying it’s okay for girls to be sexually promiscuous for work or personal reasons or whatever. Not only that, she’s blind!

And so is the editor of my damned paper!!!

Aside from finding a way to get a note to the author of the article to ask him if he grammars much, I’ve a good mind to write a letter to the editor.

I just don’t know where to start.


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Which Book or Movie Title Describes your Life?

I don’t often post surveys, nor do I usually participate in them. But I came across one that I thought might be fun on Facebook the other day and I thought it might be amusing to pass it along. Kind of.

The Facebook version asked a lot of random questions and came up with the answer for me. However, I lost all respect for it when it posed a question in which I had to choose a “literary character,” one of which was Christian Grey of 50 Shades of Grey fame. 🙄

So instead of posting the actual survey, I thought I’d just ask: If you could choose just one book title (or movie title, I’m not picky) to describe your life as it is right now, what would it be?

I realize you must scroll through the comments to get to the comment box, so try to come up with your answer before you look at the others, so you’re not influenced.

Go!


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SoCS – The Opposite of Average

I never did like averages. When they say, “the average age is between (this) and (that)” it always made me think about those who made the average what it is. For instance, the average is between 25 and 50. What about the 10s and the 75s? Nobody ever thinks about them, because they’re not in the average – but they’re just as important in making the average as anything else.

In sports I always root for the underdog. It’s why I’m a Toronto Maple Leafs fan. You remember them? The famous golfers? They’re always the first out on the greens every season. Haha. (They’re going to win the cup next year, by the way.)

I can see the appeal in being considered average. Having two special needs kids, the word “normal” has a unique set of meanings to me – and no, my kids are not average. In some ways they’re far above.

And I certainly don’t want my epic novel to be average. It’s gonna shine.

So what’s the opposite of the word “average”? Is it unique? Is it special? Is it simply “outside the norm”? Underdog? Is there one?

A werewolf and a vampire go into a bar. The vampire orders a glass of red. The werewolf eats the bartender. The vampire says, “Next time, I’m buying.”

I have no idea where that came from, other than somewhere inside my (opposite of average) brain. Thank you very much.

 

Badge by: Doobster at Mindful Digressions

Badge by: Doobster at Mindful Digressions

This post is part of Stream of Consciousness Saturday. Find this week’s prompt at the link and join in! https://lindaghill.wordpress.com/2014/09/19/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-september-2014/


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What Keeps You From Feeling Your Age?

I stood at the kitchen counter yesterday, stirring Christopher’s medicine into his orange juice and I remembered learning to stir for the first time; I might have been three or four years old. It came back to me in a flash. My senses all conspired to bring me there: the sound of the spoon clinking around the inside the glass, the feel of the circular motion and the sight of my fingers manipulating the spoon in a way I no longer need to concentrate on.

Sometimes it’s the smell of freshly mowed grass, just as I recall it wafting in my bedroom window when my dad went out to mow the lawn before an early game of golf on a Sunday morning that takes me back. Or the taste of a shortbread cookie, dipped in a cup of tea.

Though many of my memories take me back to my childhood there is something inside me that refuses to believe I’m more than half my actual age. Despite my aches, the deterioration of my eyesight, and my inability to react as quickly as I used to, in my mind I can’t possibly be 50 years old.

They say that children keep us young as long as we can remember how to play.  For some it’s staying active, both in body and mind. I’m sure those memories that return as though they were only yesterday must have an influence on how we feel.

I hear people, all the time, say they don’t feel as old as the calendar tells them they must be.

What keeps you from feeling your age?