A Loo Like No Other

So Ken and I are currently travelling across the Atlantic on a large boat, the Queen Mary 2 to be precise. We’re on our way to the UK to visit family with my parents. Currently, Ken is driving me crazy by suggesting things I can write (“tell them you hate jazz”) because he’s too cheap to pay for the wifi plan and he is bored. “God help you if you were ever locked in the bathroom with me,” he just opined. And yes, that would be horrible. Not because of Ken, who has stopped talking about his tendency to flatulate in small spaces when he realized I was writing everything he said down, but because the bathroom in our stateroom, while frustratingly typical in that the flush mechanism is BEHIND the toilet lid, forcing you to TOUCH the lid in order to flush the toilet, is extremely small and very strange. Here’s a photograph:

I’m not certain what the builders of this ship thought people would be doing in the bathroom but it’s set up like a weird bar. Not only is there the strange, prerequisite metal toilet paper cover that makes a perfect place to put your cocktail, but above that, there’s an ashtray, and mounted on the door, there’s a bottle opener. So what? I’m sitting on the can drinking beer and having a smoke, waiting for the disco to start in the shower? Ken has interrupted to remind me to tell you that “we met Seth”. Who is Seth? I have no idea. Apparently he works remotely and is doing a global cruise. Anyway, I’ve given Ken a ball of wool to bat around and amuse himself with while I finish this post in the theatre where we’re waiting for a show to start. The theatre, fortunately, is bigger than our bathroom but without the ashtrays, bottle openers, and potential disco dancing. Or Seth.

Tweet Tweet, Twiddle Twiddle

There are numerous reasons to get off the app formerly known as Twitter: the majority of people on there now are racist, sexist, homophobic, and transphobic. It used to be that Twitter brought people together—for example, I thought that there were many things about myself that I thought were specific to me, and then I learned I was not, in fact, unique, which was actually a comfort. What the internet taught me mostly is that the things I thought were strange and quirky about myself (“mydangblog…strange and quirky?!” I hear you whispering in shock) are traits that a great many other people share. Imagine 100 years ago not knowing that having upwards of 8 decorative pillows on your bed was perfectly reasonable? Or that there were other people who not only knew what “the good tea towel” was, they also got upset when someone used it to wipe the counter? Here are a couple of other examples:

I was shocked to learn that I am NOT the only person who does this. Whenever I take a plate of chicken out to the BBQ, I grab the tongs, and the first thing I do, immediately, is to click the tongs together, like “Clang, c-clang, clang”. The only difference between me and the author of this tweet is that I don’t REALLY do it to make sure they work. I mean, that’s part of it for sure, but for me, it’s more of a swashbuckler-y type thing. I like to imagine that I’m a grilling female Errol Flynn, and when I clang them, I also do a little lunge and a quick parry. I sometimes end with a flourish and a bow because that’s how I roll.

A while ago, Ken and I had a family get together, and someone left a fork behind. It was a f*cking weird fork, all flat and plain and whatnot, completely unlike all my other normal, human forks. But every time I reached into the cupboard to grab a fork, IT was the one I always came out with. Once, I actually said out loud to it, “I hate you, stupid fork.” Then one day, I got fed up, and I threw it in the garbage. So I apologize to whatever family member it belonged to, but seriously, if I come to your house and see the rest of your terrible forks, they’re all going in the trash.

This is kind of like the opposite of Number 4, and while the person who wrote this tweet doesn’t understand proper punctuation (and thanks to the internet, I know I’m not the ONLY one who cares about things like this), it’s true. Just the other day, Ken came into the room. My first reaction was to say, “What are you doing?!” His response was to pause for a moment, so that he could do a mental scan to try and figure out why I was asking him that.

Ken: Um…nothing?
Me: Why are you using my mug?
Ken: (nervously scoffs) This isn’t your mug.
Me: Uh, yes it is.
Ken: No, it’s not—your name’s not written on it.
Me: There’s a giant f*cking “S” on both sides, Ken.
Ken: We have tons of other mugs. Use one of those.
Me: I could offer you THE SAME ADVICE, KEN!!

So yes, social media has some positives. On the other hand, I’m seriously thinking of getting off it completely for one reason and one reason only: TEMU. Every time I go on any social media, I’m immediately inundated by ads for Temu. I don’t know what Temu is, I don’t know what Temu does, except that it has annoyed me to the point of rage. Especially this ad which appears on every third post as I’m scrolling, regardless of what platform I’m on:

Who the hell is this child and why is she wearing that cheap-ass T-shirt?!! Why would I want to buy that T-shirt??!! And why has Temu been showing me the same godforsaken ad for a small girl in a stupid T-shirt all day and all night for several weeks now??!!! And what is it that her MAMA HAS???!!! I’ve never bought anything from them and now I NEVER will, but I can’t even block the ad, because when I try, it takes me IMMEDIATELY TO THEIR WEBSITE BUT DOESN’T SHOW ME THE T-SHIRT SO I WILL NEVER KNOW. Temu? F* u.

Present and Accounted For

Last week, I received funding from The Writer’s Union of Canada to go up North and do writing workshop presentations at the local high school there. I’ve done this before at other schools and it usually goes well, despite the incident in the spring where the teacher in charge confided that she hadn’t told the students I was coming. When I asked, “Why not?”, she said if they knew, NONE OF THEM WOULD SHOW UP, and if that isn’t a boost to the old ego, I don’t know what is. But the kids this week all knew I was their guest speaker and they seemed pretty jazzed about it. As for me, I was exhausted for a variety of reasons. First, after haranguing Ken about taking too long at work and making us late KEN, we set out on the 4 hour drive. We were about 20 minutes down the highway when Ken asked where I’d put the copies of the books I was taking to raffle off to the kids, and I realized with horror that I had forgotten an entire bag, which also contained the memory stick with my PowerPoint presentation. I actually started to cry at the thought of going back and losing even more time, as if I wasn’t stressed out of my mind with anxiety already, but there was no choice. Luckily, Ken isn’t the kind of guy to give me grief over things like that—goodness knows I felt bad enough. And not only was I exhausted after the now 6-hour drive, I also have a terrible time sleeping at hotels. I also felt grubby, because the motel we had booked smelled terrible and had no hot water. It made me appreciate social distancing even more because I kept 6 feet between me and anyone who could catch a whiff of ‘motel stank’.

But the students were lovely and very enthusiastic—until it came time to share their writing ideas with the whole group. Their reluctance was palpable. Luckily, I have a little trick up my sleeve that I use in times like this.

Me: I’m working on a new book right now, a murder mystery, and I need victims. So if you put up your hand and share your writing, I will name a character after you, and you get to choose how I murder you.
Students (all hands go flying up in the air): Me! Me!

Here are some of my favourites:

Matty – killed on stage during a musical number, possibly electrocuted by her guitar

Kennedy – flaming arrow to the chest

Zack – burned in a public place on a giant pyre

Grace – pushed off a rollercoaster at the top by a very strong 5-year-old

Jimmy – killed fighting a bear

It was simultaneously adorable AND terrifying how much thought they’d put into this. And it all reminded me so much of Edward Gorey’s The Gashlycrumb Tinies. If you haven’t read it (click link if you want to have it read to you but it’s gruesome, just an fyi), it’s a very darkly humorous alphabet book: A is for Amy who fell down the stairs / B is for Basil assaulted by bears…and it goes on, only getting worse, as you can well imagine, but the illustrations are hilarious. Anyway, it was a good time and Ken and I made it home that night without having to stay in motel hell again.

But doing things like this is getting harder and harder for me. When did I stop wanting to explore the world and just stay home? I know it’s not just me—I was having a conversation with a friend the other day:

Friend: How did it happen? When did I become so old?
Me: I know, right? Like, all I want is to putter in the garden, write, make miniatures, and watch TV in bed with a glass of wine—that’s the dream.
Friend: One of my friends had extra tickets to the Pink show last week, and I LOVE Pink, but it was in Toronto, last minute, and I was like, go ALL THE WAY to Toronto and see a concert AT NIGHT without any chance to prepare? Hard pass!
Me: Ken wanted to go to a restaurant last week and I begged him to let me cook for him at home. Why would I want to spend all that money to WAIT for my food to come?!
Friend: EXACTLY!

Stick, meet mud. Maybe I was always like this, but I had the youthful energy to overcome it. Who knows. At any rate, if you’re looking for me, you can find me at home, nestled in my office writing a story about a boy who gets killed in a bear fight. I already have the last line written: “It was a bear, Jimmy. What did you expect?”

Contest Winners; Quince-A-Rama

Contest Winners; Quince-A-Rama

First, I’m happy to say that several many of you guessed that the thing missing from my tiny room was indeed a clock! Well done, and now you will all be murdered in nefarious ways in my new comedy book Murder Most Novel about a young woman/aspiring author who becomes embroiled in an Agatha Christie style murder scenario. If you have a particular preference for your murder (poison, machete, bashed with a clock), let me know, and I’ll try to accommodate. You were all very clever, but I have to say that Anonymole’s poem/riddle/guess really took the day:

Dueling portraits invite conversation,
while the bird tweets its irritation.

Below, the blood bright Persian,
offsets the walls’ psilocybin excursions.

A Tiffany, a punch bowl, a violin,
speak of parties, a present left to atone for prior sins.

Yet the room exists in silence,
it enjoys no ticks, no tocks,

For nowhere amongst its fine refinements,
do we see a cherry clock.

So thank you, my friends. You all rose to the challenge and proved that you really do know me so well!

In other news, I’ve been very busy because it’s one of my favourite times of year—the quince is finally ripe. Many years ago, we had a pear tree on our property which started to die. But as it did, another plant sprouted from its base, and that plant was a quince bush. Apparently, quince have hardier roots than some pear species so they’re often grafted onto quince. And while I missed the pear, I soon realized the (labour-intensive) joy that is the quince fruit. They are rock hard and can’t be eaten as is, but if you cook them first, they turn a delightful pink colour and taste amazing. Every year, I become super-home-maker-y and produce several batches of jam as well as some wonderful quince crumble. Of course, I always have more quince than I need so I can sell off the rest to quince lovers in the area and make some money to fund my miniature obsession.

In other other news, I also completed a miniature outdoor courtyard. I think it’s very cute but I’m at the point where I don’t quite know what to do with all these miniatures—maybe I can throw them in with the quince, like “Buy some quince, get a miniature room for free”. It’s a vicious/delicious circle.