I woke up to a fresh blanket of snow this morning. It’s to be expected – I live in Ontario, Canada.
Strange strange happenings are going on in the world, weather wise, however. In the south – in fact all the way to South America – the temperatures have dropped to past freezing.
And today, while I was delivering my newspapers here in Ontario, it began to rain. Upwards.
It didn’t matter how far I looked down, with the big hood on my winter coat over my head, I was getting rain in my face.
I’ve had one of these every year since I was a child.
I used to be the only one in the house with one, now every year I buy four – one each for the kids,
and one for me.
I don’t know… Apart from the obvious miniscule sugar rush each morning, there’s something inherently comforting in hunting down the right number for the date, and then popping open the little door. And if you’re lucky, the chocolates didn’t all come unglued during shipping, and they’re not all sitting down at the bottom of the packaging.
So far, so good.
Blog post of December 4th, in honour of Every Damn Day December. Check it out! It’s not too late to join in!
So I was walking across the main road that’s on my paper route when I passed over this for the first time:
There I was, standing in the middle of the road, wondering why they would print the word “Danger” on a manhole cover. It’s in the middle of the road! Cars drive over it all the time! So I took this picture.
Luckily, I got out of the way before a car came.
Blog post of December 2nd, in honour of Every Damn Day December. Check it out! It’s not too late to join in!
I find myself saying ‘If I could only just…’ a lot.
If I could only just find more time to write…
If I could only just have more money…
If I could only just find true love…
It goes on, ad infinitum. But all these things denote that I’m not content, when for the most part, I am. I have my children here with me, we have a roof over our heads, the air inside is warmer than outside, and there is food in the fridge. And I’m keeping up with my writing quite well, although sometimes it’s a struggle to do anything else.
So what is it which makes me wish for more? Is it simply the human condition to keep striving? It’s hard, for me at least, to keep my mind from going, from wandering, and from wondering what it would be like if I had just a little more.
Now if only I could consume nothing but coffee and chocolate and wine and cheese …. then I’d be happy.
I’m in a unique, somewhat unenviable position of having a child who enjoys trick-or-treating but doesn’t eat – all of his meals are administered through a tube. So while he’s at school, I must either hide the candy or eat it.
Though I do my best to resist temptation while indulging in my second love (after my kids) of writing, as they say, resistance is futile. After all, what better way to pass the time whilst NaNoing than eat sweets?
Thank goodness for running around the mall doing Christmas shopping in December, eh?
Good Saturday morning! I hope everyone is having a nice weekend, particularly those who don’t have to work. If you have a regular 9-5, you shouldn’t be working today, right? Then again…
I was reading the paper (it’s become a habit now, since I did my challenge) and was struck by an article in the entertainment section about Jared Leto and his loss of 30+ pounds for the sake of his role in the upcoming movie, “Dallas Buyers Club.” You can see his picture here. It’s really quite shocking.
Reading this lead me to think about what we do for our jobs. Sure there are some of us who flatly refuse to wander outside our job description, but at some point I think we’ve all been in a position where we’ve gone above and beyond the call of duty for what we do for a living. Some of us do it all the time.
My own job, as a stay-at-home mom is 24/7. You might say being on call all the time IS part of my job description, and it is. But at the same time, I didn’t go into it with the expectation that I was going to be in it alone.
His Majesty, for whom I slave night and day
And speaking of my ex, over the last ten years he has been working at a few different retail chains as manager. Budgets in these places always seem to be a concern, according to him, and he is constantly having to work overtime so as not to tax the budget by having to pay employees – he is on salary.
I’d be interested to hear what you do that is ‘above and beyond.’ Come on, toot your own horn. After all, it’s rare that we get any appreciation from all we do, isn’t it?
It’s my last day to report on what inspired me from the previous day’s newspaper, and I must say, it has been a challenge. I may start again after NaNoWriMo is finished – then again I may take a break. I’d rather not try to make plans that far in advance.
On my final day here then, I’d like to talk about the orange box. Being that it’s Hallowe’en, you might assume that it’s related in some way to the holiday, but it isn’t.
The orange box is being introduced in my city to go alongside the blue box, for recycling paper, plastic and tin, and the green bin for compost. What is the orange box for, you ask? (Or maybe you don’t ask and I’m the only one just finding out about it…) It’s for electronic recycling.
How, you may ask, (and this time you really may be asking) has recycling inspired me to write a blog post? I got to thinking about what we consume. Throwing away something electronic was something we used to do maybe every five years, if not ten. Years ago, things lasted longer not only because they were built better, but because they didn’t go out of style as fast. In my house right now, however, I have five old-style computer monitors, four computers – the oldest has a 5 1/4″ floppy drive – one ancient laptop, and one old tv set, not to mention numerous broken cellphones, VCR’s and DVD players. All of the monitors still work, but what else am I to do with them but throw them away?
Having written all that down (and I’m shocked), I realize that the time has come when we need such a thing as an orange box. Still, it makes you think, doesn’t it? All this junk we’re getting rid of into landfills and that which goes up in smoke to pollute our air – where are we going to live when it all takes over?
Here’s to the original, organic orange box. May one light up your Hallowe’en!
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
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!
lindaghill.com 
