In winter, it’s rare that walking around the block on my paper route isn’t an adventure. Between the ice, the slush, the snow, the temperatures that freeze my nostrils shut on contact, and days like to today when we have a miniature snow storm, there’s always something to make me rather stay in my pyjamas.
It’s all part of being Canadian. Our weather is a source of national pride. It’s what we endure to live in a country as free as this one is; with all its faults, at least we’re able to say we weathered a storm or two and came out the other side with a smile. Most of the time, anyway.
And so it is with that same pride that I walk around the block, braving the elements to deliver the news.
As difficult as it can be, I do love this country.
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Okay, so I had this dream just before I woke up this morning. It was dark outside (in my dream) and I was looking out my front door (which didn’t look at all like the scenery outside my real front door). Leaning up against a post about six feet beyond the door, was a dead, flattened squirrel. Two black cats came along and started fighting over it. They dragged it away. They were trying to eat it.
Then, on the front lawn, I saw two moose (mooses? meese?) chasing a dog. The dog stopped and looked at me only to be caught by a horse – the horse grabbed the dog (it was a collie with a collar) by the scruff of the neck. Somehow the dog got away but the horse and the moose (mooses? meese?) were chasing it so they could eat it.
Then I woke up.
Analysis anyone?
P.S. I had fish for dinner last night – not dog, and not roadkill.
1. It’s never too late to join in, since the “Jot it” part of JusJoJan means that anything you jot down, anywhere (it doesn’t have to be a post) counts as a “Jot.” If it makes it to WordPress that day, great! If it waits a week to get from the sticky note to your screen, no problem!
2. If you write a JusJoJan post on your blog, you can ping it back to the above link to make sure everyone participating knows where to find it.
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Today, I’m a half a century old
Through the years, it’s true, I’ve been told
To take time with my nose
To oft’ sniff a rose
On this adage I’m most definitely sold.
Not quite a limerick, but it’s the thought that counts, right?
I think in the next half-century, (because that is surely how long I have left), I’m going to attempt not to fuss over things as much. Who needs perfectionism anyway? It is more important, after all, to take the time to appreciate the beauty that can be found in life’s imperfections. They are what makes things real and not manufactured.
Cheers to life, my friends. Live it to the fullest.
1. It’s never too late to join in, since the “Jot it” part of JusJoJan means that anything you jot down, anywhere (it doesn’t have to be a post) counts as a “Jot.” If it makes it to WordPress that day, great! If it waits a week to get from the sticky note to your screen, no problem!
2. If you write a JusJoJan post on your blog, you can ping it back to the above link to make sure everyone participating knows where to find it.
3. Write anything!
4. Have fun!
P.S. If you missed my JusJoJan 21 installment, you can find it here on my fiction blog.
“My GRLby John W. Howell is fast-paced thriller that shows how your life can be turned upside down in the blink of an eye. . . It is a well-written story that kept me glued, page after page.” Readers’ Favorite Five Stars – Reviewed by Faridah Nassozi. See the entire review HERE
Click cover to visit Amazon
Blurb:
John J. Cannon successful San Francisco lawyer takes a well-deserved leave of absence from the firm and buys a boat he names My GRL. He is unaware that his newly purchased boat had already been targeted by a terrorist group. John’s first inkling of a problem is when he wakes up in the hospital where he learns he was found unconscious next to the dead body of the attractive young woman who sold him the boat in the first place. John now stands between the terrorists and the success of their mission.
Author Bio:
Photo by Tim Burdick
John W. Howell’s main interests are reading and writing. He turned to writing as a full time occupation after an extensive career in business. John writes thriller fiction novels and short stories. He also has a three times weekly blog at Fiction Favorites .
John lives on Mustang Island in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of south Texas with his wife and their spoiled rescue pets.
There was nothing particularly appealing about Kingston, Ontario, when I first started writing my novel, The Great Dagmaru. At the time, I was traveling there weekly to attend doctor’s appointments at either Kingston General or Hotel Dieu Hospital. Two things inspired me to set my story there: one, I was familiar with the geography of the city, and two, this place:
Kingston’s Grand Trunk Railway Station – source – Wikimapia.org
I started writing my novel about a teenaged girl named Herman, who runs away from home and meets a tall dark stranger on a train. She never makes it where she is going. My initial idea for the tale included the stranger taking her to this train station – hollowed out as it is by a devastating fire – and keeping her there to serve him and his wicked magic. However, as I wrote, the character of the tall dark stranger morphed into Stephen Dagmar, a rich, gorgeous, and talented magician with a dark secret, who lives in a grand Victorian house with a turret:
I was lucky to be able to stay in the house I had envisioned my character living in, and as you’ll see if you read my July account, I even had the thrill of being allowed to sleep two nights in the turret room.
As I said at the beginning of this post, Kingston had no real attraction for me until my characters were born. Gradually as I traveled there for appointments I found myself enthralled with the city. I could see the places I imagined my characters would visit, and the things they would see with their own eyes. Eventually, the place began to inspire me, like a painting of a narrow pathway curving through a lush forest.
My story had a world.
Here are some pictures I took while I was there: here is the world where Stephen and Herman exist.
Next door to the Hochelaga Inn
Cross, Lake Ontario
Girl, reading by the water
Kingston Harbour
Inside the turret, Hochelaga Inn, Kingston
I have been back to Kingston since this trip to do further research. I found the spot where Stephen’s house will be situated in the story (I expropriated land from the government which currently houses the local airport – I doubt they’ll notice) and I have measured distances from there to various places my characters will visit. I’ve sat in restaurants, sipping wine with the ghosts of Stephen’s and Herman’s characters, and I’ve strolled with them along the shoreline.
One of the first things I ever read about writing fiction was that it is necessary to create a world in which your characters will live. I consider myself lucky to have found this amazing, inspirational setting for mine.
I have love/hate relationship with those moments when I just stand back and go, “Whoa!” at something I’ve figured out after years of doing it wrong.
Today my “Whoa!” moment came to me concerning the operation of a car, which is something I’ve been doing for (I’m dating myself here) about 34 years. I was talking to the lady who manages the dry cleaner down the street, and during our conversation, we were discussing the inclement weather yesterday. She said she had been in a store for only a few minutes during the blizzard, and when she came out her windshield was already frozen so much that she had to scrape it off. That’s when I realized it.
I too, went into a store yesterday for a few minutes during the same snow storm, and when I came out, for the first time in all my years of winter driving, didn’t need to scrape the windshield. Why? Because for the first time in my life I drove to the store with the warm air blowing out at my feet and through the front-facing vents instead of the defrost, which warms up the windshield causing ice to form before I get back in. If the windshield is relatively cold all along, the snow doesn’t melt.
I’m wondering why in the name of all laziness have I believed since I was a novice driver, that if it’s cold out do I need to warm up the windshield? But that’s it! If I’m too lazy to brush the snow off when I first go out, instead of letting the warmth of the car do it, then I’ll have to either keep doing it, or waste gas letting the engine do it!
Whoa!
How I love that feeling: and how I hate having not thought of it before.
1. It’s never too late to join in, since the “Jot it” part of JusJoJan means that anything you jot down, anywhere (it doesn’t have to be a post) counts as a “Jot.” If it makes it to WordPress that day, great! If it waits a week to get from the sticky note to your screen, no problem!
2. If you write a JusJoJan post on your blog, you can ping it back to the above link to make sure everyone participating knows where to find it.
3. Write anything!
4. Have fun!
In the warmth of my living room, watching through the window as the snow flakes drift into fifties-style wannabe hairdos and watching my son play Wii Fit in his underwear, I realize how good I actually have it. Modern conveniences have given us such luxury. I mean, what if I was sitting, on a rock, in a cave right now (on my laptop of course, with full internet capabilities) worrying about whether or not I could scrounge up enough wood for the fire, wondering how far I’d have to walk because I’ve depleted the local fauna. I’d really be bitching to you over the web, wouldn’t I?
But no. I’m sitting in a warm living room, on a couch, with a kid giggling his head off every time his character jumps off the side of a floating platform to its flailing demise. Nothing bothers this kid of mine. He’ll play happily, as active as ever, while a machine pumps formula directly into his stomach as though this were the most natural thing in the world. I wonder if he’d still think so if we were sitting in a cave, watching the snow fall. Of course the machine would still be around. If I can have internet, he can have his feeding pump, right? And the manufactured formula that keeps him alive with all its non-yummy nutrients that don’t bother him in the slightest because he never tastes them.
All we’d be missing is the warmth. And the Wii.
Modern technology, I tell you. We could live without it.
1. It’s never too late to join in, since the “Jot it” part of JusJoJan means that anything you jot down, anywhere (it doesn’t have to be a post) counts as a “Jot.” If it makes it to WordPress that day, great! If it waits a week to get from the sticky note to your screen, no problem!
2. If you write a JusJoJan post on your blog, you can ping it back to the above link to make sure everyone participating knows where to find it.
3. Write anything!
4. Have fun!
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