Remember the pretty icicles?
Look! No more icicles!
And no more eavestroughs too!
*grumblegrumblegrumble*
Category Archives: Life
Shhh! Don’t Tell My Mom
The last thing I want to do is worry my mother, so I’m keeping this quiet. I can tell all of you though, because she doesn’t read my blog.
I think her car is trying to kill me.
I went out in it today to pick up some groceries, for myself as well as for her. As I came up to a stop sign I put my foot on the brake and the engine started to rev. The more I pushed the brake, the faster the engine went – and the faster the car went. Luckily there was nothing coming (and there were no cops around) because I blasted through that stop sign.
Since then I’ve started putting it into neutral when I want to stop. That’ll teach it.
But in the meantime, would someone please tell it I was only going to buy her cookies?
How Are Chickens Like Days Off?
I’m within an hour of the end of two days off. Yesterday I got a fair bit of work done on my manuscript – almost fifteen pages edited, which for me is flying through. I managed to take the evening off from everything and just watch an episode of “Breaking Bad.” I’ve only watched two so far – still wondering what all the hype’s about.
Then today I was woken up early with a phone call – Chris was sick at school and they couldn’t reach his dad. So I texted my ex, got up, delivered the papers, had a piece of toast and lay on the couch … and proceeded to sleep most of the day away. No editing accomplished.
How are chickens like days off?
Don’t count them before they’re hatched.
I need a week off.
Of All the Things to Whine About
I’m content. Basically, I am happy with my life, and yes, I’m whining about it. Let me tell you why.
The tortured soul can write poems of epic proportions. In times of loneliness, of pain, of near breakdown, a writer can bleed upon the page. But when this writer has nothing to cause her grief, there is nothing but fluff. Lint, even.
Is it strange to wish I longed for something? To pass my finger quickly through a flame doesn’t hurt. But the flame sparkles, enticingly.
Shall I burn for the sake of my art?
Awareness
Child abuse is a subject that keeps coming up around me of late, and not only because I’ve recently re-released my semi-biographical story, “Boy Series – One through…” A few minutes ago a glimpsed on Facebook a photo which made me want to throw up. I refuse to describe it – it’s one of those things that once seen cannot be unseen, and I’m sure I will have nightmares because of it. It’s worse in my mind than anything I could have imagined by myself, and in many ways, so is my series.
I’ve made the decision for a few reasons, to reveal the man behind the story. It’s not a big secret, and I don’t claim to be the one-and-only person to know… but I think having all the information that I’ve researched in one place will make the true story that much more interesting. I’ve been working, therefore, to compile links to interviews and decide what of his work might be most relevant to the story of his life. Strangely, something he said in one of the interviews I read last night cemented the decision in my mind to do this – it was almost as though I received a sign to say that it’s okay to go ahead.
The excerpt from the interview spoke of a song that he wrote about the tragedy of war. He has written several. He said that, (paraphrased) although there is little we can do about it, just spreading awareness that it exists and what it is like for those who are a part of it, whether it is their own decision to be or not, might cause someone to act differently.
And so I believe it is the same for my story of abuse. The more we are aware that it happens, even in our own neighbourhoods, the more we may look for the signs. Though we may not be able to help all of the children everywhere who suffer, if we can be kind to a child who we think may be abused, it might mean the world to that one child.
To Nav, John, Willow, and to all the people who had a hard time reading my series, I thank you for your perseverance. It was as heartbreaking to write as it is to read, just as it was for me to hear of it originally. I hope you’ll all stick around to learn the truth; to see that the man who was the boy has done well for himself despite the odds, even though he still bears the scars of his own, wretched war.
Missing the Magical Switch
Greater, more successful writers than myself (not a stretch) state that in order to be a writer one must dedicate one’s effort into writing: a writer must write. Here lies my conundrum.
I have no qualms over calling myself a writer. It’s what I do constantly – if I’m not physically typing on a keyboard or writing little notes, I’m composing something in my head with hopes that I’ll remember it.
But being a single mom, 80% responsible for two kids (meaning that I get to sleep 15% of the time and the other 5% is when their dad takes care of them) and having to be always within calling distance of my own mother, I don’t have time to write. What might take me three months more of full-time editing on my novel to render it publishable is, at the rate I’m going, bound to take me three years. Frustrated doesn’t begin to describe it.
I imagine there is, somewhere in the universe, a switch that can be flicked which could cause me to be able to stop merely calling myself a writer and become one. I realize that I cannot expect to ever take on a full-time job; my life is with my children, and taking care of them is apparently my job and mine alone. Would I want it any other way? Absolutely not.
Yet writing is also my life. I don’t live for my children – anyone who says they do, in my opinion, is in for a huge let-down when their kids leave home for good. I live for myself and I am a writer. I have a story that I feel needs to be told, of a world where I hope one day people will be able to escape, as I have. It’s inside me, it’s on my screen and it’s on paper, and all it wants is to be polished to a bright, shiny tale that many will love.
If only the magical switch to make it all come true wasn’t so far out of my reach.
The Scorecard on my Life for the Past Week
Snow – 1, BBQ – 0
Family members alive – 5, Novels edited – 0
Hairs left attached to my scalp – 100,000, Hairs in my shower drain – 99,999
Hours of sleep – 35, Brain cells remaining – 2
Icicles – 100, Buckets full of water inside the house from ice melting on the roof 20
Bottles of wine consumed – 3, Contentedness quotient – 3
Blog posts conceptualized – 21, Blog posts posted – 7
Hours worked – 133, Earnings – 0
Family members alive – 5, Laughs – countless
In all I’d say I’m doing okay.
Expectations
How many times can I be hit over the head by something obvious before it sinks in? One might hope being knocked out once would be enough. Not so much for some.
I try to live by the philosophy that to expect nothing means never being disappointed. Plans go awry, the weather won’t co-operate, machinery breaks down – the list is just about endless. In fact I’ve come to the conclusion that the only thing I can reasonably expect is that the sun will come up every morning. Let’s face it – if the sun doesn’t live up to its promise, none of this will likely matter anyway.
But it’s in the area of promises where I consistently fail: this is what I need to stop banging my head against. When someone says they’ll do something and then, for whatever reason, backs out (in my case it’s usually my ex with his promise to take the kids until work gets in the way) the results on the psyche and the blood pressure can be devastating.
I have made some progress, however, with my philosophy. I’ve learned not to expect anything of anyone unless they make a promise. While it may seem sad on the surface, if you really think about it, it’s obvious. To expect something of someone just because it’s what you would do is silly. We’re all different. Just because I would drive a friend to the airport simply because they are my friend and they are in need, doesn’t necessarily mean they would do the same for me. So if I count on it happening and end up missing my plane, do I blame them? No. I blame myself.
This thread of thought came up because twice now, in my life, I’ve been in a position where two of my friends were having a fight. I had no argument with either of them, so I decided to stay out of it both times. In both cases, however, one friend decided that I should have stuck up for them. It’s what they would have done. It’s what a friend would do, they both said. In my view however, if someone picks a fight, they’d better know what they’re getting into and know they can handle it themselves before they begin. It’s not my fault that they had the fight – I had nothing to do with it. If I get into the middle of someone else’s fistfight chances are I’ll be the one who’s hurt – why should an argument be any different? So I sat back, let the dust settle, and then in both cases one of the parties decided that if I was friends with the enemy I couldn’t be friends with them. They demanded I be on their side, or I couldn’t be their friend any more. Guess which friend I chose to stick with? Yes, in both cases it was the one who expected nothing from me but their continued friendship.
Just because I never expect anything of anyone, doesn’t mean that everyone around me is beyond hope. If I simply hope that they will do things for me, hope that they will be honest with me and respect me, then when they do I can be pleasantly surprised and if they don’t, well, I wasn’t hanging my own choices and responsibilities on them anyway.
Now all I have to do is learn to hope that my ex will live up to his end of the bargain and take the kids every other weekend, instead of expecting it. I have to stop hitting myself over the head.
I’m still learning.
Toothy Icicles
Three different shots of the icicles outside my bathroom window:
The first is fixed a little – in actuality I could see the icicles sparkling through the blinds, but they didn’t turn out well, even with some editing.
The second looked like something I might see on the morning after the night before:
And the third is like a bad nightmare gone worse:
Which one do you like best?
Stream of Consciousness Saturday Fe8/14
Don’t you hate it when you see someone who you think you recognize but you’re not sure?
There are two scenarios that I can think of at the moment: One; you can’t place the person at all, and two; you’re not sure if it’s the person you think it is or if it’s some stranger.
For instance, I’m sitting in the food court of the local mall, watching a guy who I can see in profile as he talks to a little girl beside him, and I could swear it’s Tyler Stewart, drummer for the band, the Bare Naked Ladies. So, do I go over and say hi to him? It wouldn’t be too weird – I went to high school with him. We were in the same music program together. He has much less hair now… But I’m thinking, if it was him, wouldn’t there be mobs of people hanging around him?
Maybe not.
What do you do when this happens? Do you avoid eye contact and hope they don’t notice you? Do you take a chance?
I once had a woman walk up to me in a shopping mall, much like the one I’m in, and she was absolutely positive I was someone else. She called me “Nicky,” asked me how I’d been doing, and I think she was going to hug me until I managed to get a word in edgewise and tell her she had the wrong person. Wow, was she embarrassed.
Since then, (and even before, but more so since then) I’m very careful about who I approach. Actually, I usually run in the other direction, which is what I’ll do today I think. After all, if I want Tyler’s autograph, I can probably wait ’til the next high school reunion.
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